,*..:•■- 




Class ?ft3 057 
Boole -M8 _ 



1840 



LUx^v 



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A 

HISTORY 






LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 



INTRODUCTION. 



In undertaking to write a history of Grecian literature, it is not our 
intention to enumerate the names of those many hundred authors whose 
works, accumulated in the Alexandrine Library, are reported, after 
passing through many other perils, to have finally been burnt by the 
Khalif Omar — an event from which the cause of civilisation has not, 
perhaps, suffered so much as many have thought; inasmuch as the 
inheritance of so vast a collection of writings from antiquity would, by 
engrossing all the leisure and attention of the moderns, have diminished 
their zeal and their opportunities for original productions. Nor will it 
be necessary to carry our younger readers (for whose use this work is 
chiefly designed) into the controversies of the philosophical schools, the 
theories of grammarians and critics, or the successive hypotheses of 
natural philosophy among the Greeks — in short, into those departments 
of literature which are the province of the learned by profession, and 
whose influence is confined to them alone. Our object is to consider 
Grecian literature as a main constituent of the character of the Grecian 
people, and to show how those illustrious compositions, which we still 
justly admire as the classical writings of the Greeks, naturally sprung 
from the taste and genius of the Greek races, and the constitution of 
civil and domestic society as established among them. For this pur- 
pose our inquiries may be divided into three principal heads: — 1. The 
development of Grecian poetry and prose before the rise of the Athenian 
literature ; 2, The flourishing era of poetry and eloquence at Athens ; 
and, 3. The history of Greek literature in the long period after Alex- 
ander; which last, although it produced a much larger number of 
writings than the former periods, need not, consistently with the object 
of the present work, be treated at great length, as literature had in this 
age fallen into the hands of the learned few, and had lost its living 
influence on the general mass of the community. 

In attempting to trace the gradual development of the literature of 



[ 



9 HISTORY OF THE \ X a\j p-S^ 

ancient Greece from its earliest origin, it would be easy to make a 
beginning, by treating of the extant works of Grecian writers in their 
chronological order. We might then commence at once with Homer 

and Hesiod: but it' we were to adopt this course, we should, like an epic 
poet, place our beginning in the middle of the history; for, like the 
Pallas of Grecian poetry, who sprang full-armed from the head of 
Jupiter, the literature of Greece wears the perfection of beauty in those 
works which Herodotus and Aristotle, and all critical and trust-worthy 
inquirers among the Greeks, recognised as being the most ancient that 
had descended to their times. Although both in the Iliad and Odyssey 
we can clearly discern traces of the infancy of the nation to which they 
belong, and although a spirit of simplicity pervades them, peculiar to 
the childhood of the human race, yet the class of poetry under which 
they fall, appears in them at its full maturity ; all the laws which 
reflection and experience can suggest for the epic form are observed 
with the most refined taste ; all the means are employed by which 
the general effect can be heightened ; no where does the poetry bear 
the character of a firs 4 essay or an unsuccessful attempt at some higher 
poetical flight ; indeed, as no subsequent poem, either of ancient or 
modern times, has so completely caught the genuine epic tone, there 
seems good reason to doubt whether any future poet will again be able 
to strike the same chord. It seems, however, manifest, that there 
must have been many attempts and experiments before epic poetry 
could reach this elevation ; and it was, doubtless, the perfection of the 
Iliad and Odyssey, to which these prior essays had led, that buried 
the productions of former bards in oblivion. Hence the first dawn 
of Grecian literature is without any perfect memorial ; but we must be 
content to remain in ignorance of the connexion of literature with 
the character of the Greek races at the outset of their national existence, 
if we renounced all attempt at forming a conception of the times anterior 
to the Homeric poems. In order, therefore, to throw some light on this 
obscure period, we shall first consider those creations of the human 
intellect which in general are prior to poetry, and which naturally 
precede poetical composition, as poetry in its turn is followed by regular 
composition in prose. These are language and religion. When these 
two important subjects have been examined, we shall proceed, by means 
of allusions in the Homeric poems themselves, and the most credible 
testimonies of later times, to inquire into the progress and character of 
the Greek poetry before the time of Homer. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT Glti 



CHAPTER I. 



o 1. General account of the Languages of the Indo-Teutonic family. — o 2. Origin 
and formation of the Indo-Teutonic languages — multiplicity of their grammatical 

forms § .'{. Characteristics of the Greek language, as compared with the other 

languages of the Indo-Teutonic family. — § 4. Variety of forms, inflexions, and 
dialects in the Greek language. — § 5. The tribes of Greece, and their several 
dialects — characteristics of each dialect. 

§ 1. Language, the earliest product of the human mind, and the 
origin of all other intellectual energies, is at the same time the clearest 
evidence of the descent of a nation and of its affinity with other races. 
Hence the comparison of languages enables us to judge of the history 
of nations at periods to which no other kind of memorial, no tradition 
or record, can ascend. In modern times, this subject has been studied 
with more comprehensive views and more systematic methods than 
formerly : and from these researches it appears that a large part of the 
nations of the ancient world formed a family, whose languages 
(besides a large number of radical words, to which we need not here 
particularly advert) had on the whole the same grammatical structure 
and the same forms of derivation and inflexion. The nations between 
which this affinity subsisted are — the Indians, whose language, in its 
earliest and purest form, is preserved in the Sanscrit; the Persians, 
whose primitive language, the Zend, is closely allied with the Sanscrit ; 
the Armenians and Phrygians, kindred races, of whose language the 
modern Armenian is a very mutilated remnant, though a few ancient 
features preserved in it still show its original resemblance ; the Green 
nation, of which the Latin people is a branch ; the Sclavo?iian races, 
who, notwithstanding their intellectual inferiority, appear from their 
language to be nearly allied with the Persians and other cognate 
nations ; the Lettic tribes, among which the Lithuanian has preserved 
the fundamental forms of this class of languages with remarkable 
fidelity ; the Teutonic, and, lastly, the Celtic races, whose language (so 
far as we can judge from the very degenerate remains of it now extant), 
though deviating widely in some respects from the general character 
perceptible in the other languages, yet unquestionably belongs to the 
same family. It is remarkable that this family of languages, which 
possess the highest perfection of grammatical structure, also includes a 
larger number of nations, and has spread over a wider extent of surface, 
than any other : the Semitic family (to which the Hebrew, Syrian, 
Phoenician, Arabian, and other languages belong), though in many 
respects it can compete with the Indo-Germanic, is inferior to it in the 
perfection of its structure and its capacity for literary development; in 
respect of its diffusion likewise it approaches the Indian class of lan- 
guages, without being equal to it; while, again, the rude and meagre 
languages of the American aborigines are often confined to a very 

b2 



4 HISTORY OP THE 

narrow district, and appear to have no affinity with those of the other 
tribes in the immediate vicinity*. Hence, perhaps, it may he inferred, 
that the higher capacity for the formation and development of language 
Was at this early period combined with a greater physical and mental 
energy — in short, with all those qualities on which the ulterior improve- 
ment andjncrease of the nations by which it was spoken depended. 

While the Semitic branch occupies the south-west of Asia, the Indo- 
Germanic languages run in a straight line from south-east to north- 
west, through Asia and Europe : a slight interruption, which occurs in 
the country between the Euphrates and Asia Minor, appears to have 
been occasioned by the pressure of Semitic or Syrian races from the 
south; for it seems probable that originally the members of this 
national family succeeded one another in a continuous line, although 
we are not now able to trace the source from which this mighty stream 
originally flowed. Equally uncertain is it whether these languages were 
spoken by [the earliest inhabitants of the countries to which they be- 
longed, or were introduced by subsequent immigrations ; in which latter 
case the rude aborigines would have adopted the principal features of 
the language spoken by the more highly endowed race, retaining at the 
same time much of their original dialect — an hypothesis which appears 
highly probable as regards those languages which show a general 
affinity with the others, but nevertheless differ from them widely in their 
grammatical structure and the number of their radical forms. 

§ 2. On the other hand, this comparison of languages leads to many 
results, with respect to the intellectual state of the Greek people, which 
throw an unexpected light into quarters where the eye of the historian 
has hitherto been able to discover nothing but darkness. We reject as 
utterly untenable the notion that the savages of Greece, from the inar- 
ticulate cries by which they expressed their animal wants, and from the 
sounds by which they sought to imitate the impressions of outward 
objects, gradually arrived at the harmonious and magnificent language 
which we admire in the poems of Homer. So far is this hypothesis 
from the truth, that language evidently is connected with the power of 
abstracting or of forming general notions, and is inconsistent with the 
absence of this faculty. It is plain that the most abstract parts of 
speech, those least likely to arise from the imitation of any outward 
impression, were the first which obtained a permanent form ; and 
hence those parts of speech appear most clearly in all the languages of 
the Indo-Teutonic family. Among these are the verb " to be," the 
forms of which seem to alternate in the Sanscrit, the Lithuanian, and 
the Greek; the pronouns, which denote the most general relations 
of persons and things to the speaker; the numerals, also abstract 

* Some of the American languages are rather cumbersome than meagre in their 
grammmatical forms ; and some are much more widely spread than others.— Note by 
Editor. r 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 5 

terms, altogether independent of impressions from single objects ; and, 
lastly, the grammatical forms, by which the actions expressed by verbs 
are referred to the speaker, and the objects expressed by nouns are 
placed in the most various relations to one another. The luxuriance of 
grammatical forms which we perceive in the Greek cannot t have been 
of late introduction, but must be referred to the earliest period of the 
language; for we find traces of nearly all of them in the cognate 
tongues, which could not have been the case unless the languages before 
they diverged had possessed these forms in common : thus the distinc- 
tion between aorist tenses, which represent an action as a moment, 
as a single point, and others, which represent it as continuous, like a 
prolonged line, occurs in Sanscrit as well as in Greek. 

In general it may be observed, that in the lapse of ages, from the 
time that the progress of language can be observed, grammatical forms, 
such as the signs of cases, moods, and tenses, have never been increased 
in number, but have been constantly diminishing. The history of the 
Romance, as well as of the Germanic, languages, shows in the clearest 
manner how a grammar, once powerful and copious, has been gradually 
weakened and impoverished, until at last it preserves only a few frag- 
ments of its ancient inflections. The ancient languages, especially 
the Greek, fortunately still retained the chief part of their gram- 
matical forms at the time of their literary development; thus, for 
example, little was lost in the progress of the Greek language from 
Homer to the Athenian orators. Now there is no doubt that this lux- 
uriance of grammatical forms is not an essential part of a language, 
considered merely as a vehicle of thought. It is well known that the 
Chinese language, which is merely a collection of radical words destitute 
of grammatical forms, can express even philosophical ideas with tolerable 
precision ; and the English, which, from the mode of its formation by 
a mixture of different tongues, has been stripped of its grammatical 
inflections more completely than any other European language, seems 
nevertheless, even to a foreigner, to be distinguished by its energetic 
eloquence. All this must be admitted by every unprejudiced inquirer ; 
but yet it cannot be overlooked, that this copiousness of grammatical 
forms, and the fine shades of meaning which they express, evince a 
nicety of observation and a faculty of distinguishing, which unques- 
tionably prove that the race of mankind among whom these languages 
arose was characterized by a remarkable correctness and subtlety of 
thought. Nor can any modern European, who forms in his mind a 
lively image of the classical languages in their ancient grammatical 
luxuriance, and compares them with his mother tongue, conceal from 
himself that in the ancient languages the words, with their inflections, 
clothed as it were with muscles and sinews, come forward like living 
bodies, full of expression and character ; while in the modern tongues 
the words seem shrunk up into mere skeletons. Another advantage 
which belongs to the fulness of grammatical forms is, that words of 



6 HISTORY OF THE 

similar signification make likewise a similar impression on the ear; 
whence each sentence obtains a certain symmetry and, even where the 
collocation of the words is involved, a clearness and regularity, which may 
be compared with the effect produced on the eye by the parts of a well- 
proportioned building ; whereas, in the languages which have lost their 
grammatical forms, either the lively expression of the feeling is hin- 
dered by an unvarying and monotonous collocation of the words, or 
the hearer is compelled to strain his attention, in order to comprehend 
the mutual relation of the several parts of the sentence. Modern lan- 
guages seem to attempt to win their way at once to the understanding 
without dwelling in the ear ; while the classical languages of antiquity 
seek at the same time to produce a corresponding effect on the outward 
sense, and to assist the mind by previously filling the ear, as it were, 
with an imperfect consciousness of the meaning sought to be conveyed 
by the words. 

§ 3. These remarks apply generally to the languages of the Indo- 
Germanic family, so far as they have been preserved in a state of inte- 
grity by literary works and have been cultivated^ by poets and orators. 
We shall now limit our regards to the Greek language alone, and shall 
attempt to exhibit its more prominent and characteristic features as 
compared with those of its sister tongues. In the sounds which were 
formed by the various articulation of the voice, the Greek language hits 
that happy medium which characterises all the mental productions of 
this people, in being equally removed, on the one hand, from the super- 
abundant fulness, and, on the other, from the meagreness and tenuity of 
sound, by which other languages are variously deformed. If we com- 
pare the Greek with that language which comes next to it in fitness 
for a lofty and flowing style of poetry, viz., the Sanscrit, this latter 
certainly has some classes of consonants not to be found in the Greek, 
the sounds of which it is almost impossible for an European mouth to 
imitate and distinguish : on the other hand, the Greek is much richer 
in short vowels than the Sanscrit, whose most harmonious poetry would 
weary our ears by the monotonous repetition of the A sound ; and it 
possesses an astonishing abundance of diphthongs, and tones produced 
by the contraction of vowels, which a Greek mouth could alone distin- 
guish with the requisite nicety, and which, therefore, are necessarily 
confounded by the modern European pronunciation. We may likewise 
perceive in the Greek the influence of the laws of harmony , which, in 
different nations, have caused the rejection of different combinations of 
vowels and consonants, and which have increased the softness and 
beauty of languages, though sometimes at the expense of their ter- 
minations and characteristic features. By the operation of the latter 
cause, the Greek has, in many places, lost its resemblance to the 
original type, which, although not now preserved in any one of the 
extant languages, may be restored by conjecture from all of them ; even 
here, however, it cannot be denied that the correct taste and feeling 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 7 

of the Greeks led them to a happy mixture of the consonant and vowel 
sounds, by which strength has been reconciled with softness, and har- 
mony with strongly marked peculiarities ; while the language has, at 
the same time, in its multifarious dialects, preserved a variety of sound 
and character, which fit it for the most discordant kinds of poetical and 
prose composition. 

§ 4. We must not pass over one important characteristic of the Greek 
language, which is closely connected with the early condition of the 
Greek nation, and which may be considered as, in some degree, pre- 
figuring the subsequent character of its civilisation. In order to con- 
vey an adequate idea of our meaning, we will ask any person who is 
acquainted with Greek, to recal to his mind the toils and fatigue which 
he underwent in mastering the forms of the language, and the difficulty 
which he found to impress them on his memory ; when his mind, vainly 
attempting to discover a reason for such anomalies, was almost in despair 
at finding that so large a number of verbs derive their tenses from the 
most various roots ; that one verb uses only the first, another only the 
second, aorist, and that even the individual persons of the aoristare 
sometimes compounded of the forms of the first and second aorists respec- 
tively ; and that many verbs and substantives have retained only single 
or a few forms, which have been left standing by themselves, like the 
remains of a past age. The convulsions and catastrophes of which we see 
so many traces around us in the frame-work of the world have not been 
confined to external nature alone. The structure of languages also has 
evidently, in ages prior to the existence of any literature, suffered some 
violent shocks, which may, perhaps, have received their impulse from 
migrations or internal discord ; and the elements of the language, having 
been thrown in confusion together, were afterwards re-arranged, and 
combined into a new whole. Above all is this true of the Greek lan- 
guage, which bears strong marks of having originally formed part of a 
great and regular plan, and of having been reconstructed on a new 
system from the fragments of the former edifice. The same is doubtless 
also the cause of the great variety of dialects which existed both among 
the Greeks and the neighbouring nations ; — a variety, of which mention 
is made at so early a date as the Homeric poems*. As the country 
inhabited by the Greeks is intersected to a remarkable degree by moun- 
tains and sea, and thus was unfitted by Nature to serve as the habitation 
of a uniform population, collected in large states, like the plains of the 
Euphrates and Ganges ; and as, for this reason, the Greek people was 
divided into a number of separate tribes, some of which attract our 
attention in the early fabulous age, others in the later historical period ; 
so likewise the Greek language was divided, to an unexampled extent, 
into various dialects, which differed from each other according to the 

* In Iliad, ii. 804, and iv. 437, there is mention of the variety of dialects among the 
allies of the Trojans j and in Odyssey, xix. 175, among the Greek tribes in Crete# 



8 HISTORY OF THE 

several tribes and territories. In what relation the dialects of the 
Pelasgians, Dryopes, Abantes, Leleges, Epeans, and other races widely 
diffused in the earliest periods of Grecian history, may have stood to one 
another, isjndeed a question which it would be vain to attempt to answer; 
but thus much is evident, that the number of these tribes, and their 
frequent migrations, by mixing- and confounding the different races, 
contributed powerfully to produce that irregularity of structure which 
characterises the Greek language in its very earliest monuments. 

§ 5. The primitive tribes just mentioned, which were the earliest 
occupants of Greece known to tradition, and of which the Pelasgians, 
and after them the Leleges, were the most extended, unquestionably 
did much for the first cultivation of the soil, the foundation of insti- 
tutions for divine worship, and the first establishment of a regular order 
of society. The Pelasgians, widely scattered over Greece, and having 
their settlements in the most fertile regions (as the vale of the Peneus 
in Thessaly, the lower districts of Bceotia, and the plains of Argos 
and Sicyon), appear, before the time when they wandered through 
Greece in isolated bodies, as a nation attached to their own dwelling- 
places, fond of building towns, which they fortified with walls of a 
colossal size, and zealously worshipping the powers of heaven and 
earth, which made their fields fruitful and their cattle prosperous. The 
mythical genealogies of Argos competed as it were with those of 
Sicyon ; and both these cities, by a long chain of patriarchal princes 
(most of whom are merely personifications of the country, its mountains 
and rivers), were able to place their origin at a period of the remotest 
antiquity. The Leleges also (with whom were connected the Locrians 
in Northern Greece and the Epeans in Peloponnesus), although they 
had fewer fixed settlements, and appear to have led a rougher and 
more warlike life — such as still prevailed in the mountainous districts of 
Northern Greece at the time of the historian Thucydides — yet cele- 
brated their national heroes, especially Deucalion and his descendants, 
as founders of cities and temples. But there is no trace of any peculiar 
creation of the intellect having developed itself among these races, or of 
any poems in which they displayed any peculiar character ; and whe- 
ther it may be possible to discover any characteristic and distinct features 
in the legends of the gods and heroes who belong to the territories 
occupied by these different tribes is a question which must be deferred 
until we come to treat of the origin of the Grecian mythology. It is 
however much to be lamented that, with our sources of information, it 
seems impossible to form a well-grounded opinion on the dialects of 
these ancient tribes of Greece, by which they were doubtless precisely 
distinguished from one another; and any such' attempt appears the 
more hopeless, as even of the dialects which were spoken in the several 
territories of Greece within the historical period we have only a scanty 
knowledge, by means of a few inscriptions and the statements of gram- 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 9 

marians, wherever they had not obtained a literary cultivation and 
celebrity by the labours of poets and prose writers. 

Of more influence, however, on the development of the intellectual 
faculties of the Greeks was the distinction of the tribes and their 
dialects, established at a period which, from the domination of war- 
like and conquering races and the consequent prevalence of a bold 
spirit of enterprise, was called the heroic age. It is at this time, before 
the migration of the Dorians into Peloponnesus and the settlements 
in" Asia Minor, that the seeds must have been sown of an opposition 
between the races and dialects of Greece, which exercised the most 
important influence on the state of civil society, and thus on the direction 
of the mental energies of the people, of their poetry, art, and literature. 
If we consider the dialects of the Greek language, with which we are ac- 
quainted by means of its literary monuments, they appear to fall into two 
great classes, which are distinguished from each other by characteristic 
marks. The one class is formed by the JEolic dialect ; a name, indeed, 
under which the Greek grammarians included dialects very different 
from one another, as in later times everything was comprehended under 
the term iEolic, which was not Ionic, Attic, or Doric. According to 
this acceptation of the term about three-fourths of the Greek nation 
consisted of iEolians, and dialects were classed together as iEolic which 
(as is evident from the more ancient inscriptions) differed more from 
one another than from the Doric ; as, for example, the Thessalian and 
iEtolian, the Boeotian and Elean dialects. The iEolians, however, pro- 
perly so called (who occur in mythology under this appellation), lived 
at this early period in the plain of Thessaly, south of the Peneus, which 
was afterwards called Thessaliotis, and from thence as far as the Paga- 
setic Bay. We also find in the same mythical age a branch of the 
ZEolian race, in southern iEtolia, in possession of Calydon ; this frag- 
ment of the iEolians, however, afterwards disappears from history, while 
the iEolians of Thessaly, who also bore the name of Boeotians, two 
generations after the Trojan war, migrated into the country which was 
called after them Bceotia, and from thence, soon afterwards, mixed with 
other races, to the maritime districts and islands of Asia Minor, which 
from that time forward received the name of iEolis in Asia Minor *. 
It is in this latter iEolis that we become acquainted with the iEolian 
dialect, through the lyric poets of the Lesbian school, the origin and 
character of which will be explained in a subsequent chapter. On the 

* We here only reckon those Cohans who were in fact considered as belonging 
to the yEolian race, and not all the tribes which were ruled by heroes, whom Hesiod, 
in the fragment of the men, calls sons of iEolus ; although this genealogy justifies 
us in assuming a close affinity between those races, which is also confirmed by other 
testimonies. In this sense the Minyans of Orchomenus and Iolcus, ruled by the 
^Eolids Athamas and Cretheus, were of j35olian origin ; a nation which, by the 
stability of its political institutions, its spirit of enterprise, eren for maritime expe- 
ditions, and its colossal buildings, holds a pre-eminent rank among the tribes of the 
mythical age of Greece. (See Hesiod, Fragm. 28, ed. Gaisford. ' 



10 HISTORY OF THE 

whole it may be said of this dialect, as of the Boeotian in its earlier 
form, that it bears an archaic character, and approaches nearest to the 
source of the Greek language ; hence the Latin, as being connected 
with the most ancient form of the Greek, has a close affinity with it, and 
in general the agreement with the other languages of the Indo-Ger- 
manic family is always most perceptible in the iEolie. A mere variety 
of the iEolie was the dialect of the Doric race, which originally was 
confined to a narrow district in Northern Greece, but was afterwards 
spread over the Peloponnesus and other regions by that important move- 
ment of population which was called the Return of the Heracleids. It 
is characterized by strength and breadth, as shown in its fondness for 
simple open vowel sounds, and its aversion for sibilants. Much more 
different from the original type is the other leading dialect of the Greek 
language, the Ionic, which took its origin in the mother- country, and 
was by the Ionic colonies, which sailed from Athens, carried over to 
Asia Minor, where it underwent still further changes. Its character- 
istics are softness and liquidness of sound, arising chiefly from the 
concurrence of vowels, among which, not the broad a and o, but the 
thinner sounds of e and w, were most prevalent ; among the consonants 
the tendency to the use of s is most discernible. It may be observed, 
that wherever the Ionic dialect differs either in vowels or consonants 
from the /Eolic, it also differs from the original type, as may be 
discovered by a comparison of the cognate languages ; it must there- 
fore be considered as a peculiar form of the Greek, which was deve- 
loped within the limits of the Grecian territory. It is probable that 
this dialect was spoken not only by the Ionians, but also, at least one 
very similar, by the ancient Achaeans; since the Achaeans in the 
genealogical legends concerning the descendants of Hellen are repre- 
sented as the brothers of the Ionians : this hypothesis would also explain 
how the ancient epic poems, in which the Ionians are scarcely men- 
tioned, but the Achaean race plays the principal part, were written in a 
dialect which, though differing in many respects from the genuine Ionic, 
has yet the closest resemblance to it. 

Even from these first outlines of the history of the Greek dialects we 
might be led to expect that those features would be developed in the 
institutions and literature of the several races which we find in their 
actual history. In the JEolic and Doric tribes we should be prepared 
to find the order of society regulated by those ancient customs and 
principles which had been early established among the Greeks ; their 
dialects at least show a strong disposition to retain the archaic forms, 
without much tendency to refinement. Among the Dorians, however, 
every thing is more strongly expressed, and comes forward in a more 
prominent light than among the iEolians ; and as their dialect every- 
where prefers the broad, strong, and rough tones, and introduces them 
throughout with unbending regularity, so we might naturally look among 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 11 

them for a disposition to curry a spirit of austerity and of reverence for 
ancient custom through the entire frame of civil and private society. 
The IoniaiiSy on the other hand, show even in their dialect a strong 
tendency to modify ancient forms according* to their taste and humour, 
together with a constant endeavour to polish and refine, which was 
doubtless the cause why this dialect, although of later date and of 
secondary origin, was first employed in finished poetical compositions. 



CHAPTER II*. 



§ 1. The earliest form of the Greek religion not portrayed in the Homeric poems, — 
§ 2. The Olympic deities, as described' by Homer. — § 3. Earlier form of worship 
in Greece directed to the outward objects of Nature. — § 4. Character and attri- 
butes of the several Greek deities, as personifications of the powers and objects of 
Nature. — § 5. Subsequent modification of these ideas, as_ displayed in the Ho- 
meric description of the same deities. 

§ 1. Next to the formation of language, religion is the earliest object 
of attention to mankind, and therefore exercises a most important 
influence on all the productions of the human intellect. Although 
poetry has arisen at a very early date among many nations, and ages 
which were as yet quite unskilled in the other fine arts have been dis- 
tinguished for their poetical enthusiasm, yet the development of religious 
notions and usages is always prior, in point of time, to poetry. No 
nation has ever been found entirely destitute of notions of a superior 
race of beings exercising an influence on mankind ; but tribes have 
existed without songs, or compositions of any kind which could be 
considered as poetry. Providence has evidently first given mankind 
that knowledge of which they are most in need ; and has, from the 
beginning, scattered among the nations of the entire world a glimmering 
of that light which was, at a later period, to be manifested in brighter 
effulgence. 

This consideration must make it evident that, although the Homeric 
poems belong to the first age of the Greek poetry, they nevertheless 
cannot be viewed as monuments of the first period of the development 
of the Greek religion. Indeed, it is plain that the notions concerning 
the gods must have undergone many changes before (partly, indeed, by 
means of the poets themselves) they assumed that form under which 

* We have thought it absolutely essential, for the sake of accuracy, in treating 
of the deities of the ancient Greek religion, to use the names by which they were 
known to the Greeks. As these, however, may sound strange to persons not ac- 
quainted with the Greek language, we subjoin a list of the gods of the Romans with 
which they were in later times severally identified, and by whose names they are 
commonly known : —Zeus, Jupiter; Hera, Juno; Athena, Minerva; Ares, Mars; 
Artemis, Diana ; Hermes, Mercury ; Demeter, Ceres ; Cora, Proserpine ; Hephosstus, 
Vulcan ; Poseidon* Neptune ; Aphrodite, Venus ; Dionysus, Bacchus. 



12 HISTORY OF TIIF. 

they appear in the Homeric poems. The description given L>y Homer 
vl' the life of the gods in the palace of Zeus on Olympus is doubtless as 
different from the feeling and the conception with which the ancient 
Pelasgian lifted up his hands and voice to the Zeus of Dodona, whose 
dwelling was in the oak of the forest, as the palace of a Priam or Aga- 
memnon from the hut which one of the original settlers constructed of un- 
hewn trunks in a solitary pasture, in the midst of his flocks and herds. 

§ 2. The conceptions of the gods, as manifested in the Homeric 
poems, are perfectly suited to a time when the most distinguished and 
prominent part of the people devoted their lives to the occupation of 
arms and to the transaction of public business in common ; which time 
was the period in which the heroic spirit was developed. On Olympus, 
lying near the northern boundary of Greece, the highest mountain of 
this country, whose summit seems to touch the heavens, there rules 
an assembly or family of gods; the chief of which, Zeus, summons at 
his pleasure the other gods to council, as Agamemnon summons the 
other princes. He is acquainted with the decrees of fate, and is able to 
guide them ; and, as being himself king among the gods, he gives the 
kings of the earth their power and dignity. By his side is a wife, whose 
station entitles her to a large share of his rank and dominion ; and a 
daughter of a masculine complexion, a leader of battles, and a protec- 
tress of citadels, who by her wise counsels deserves the confidence which 
her father bestows on her ; besides these a number of gods, with various 
degrees of kindred, who have each their proper place and allotted duty 
in the divine palace. On the whole, however, the attention of this 
divine council is chiefly turned to the fortunes of nations and cities, and 
especially to the adventures and enterprises of the heroes, who, being 
themselves for the most part sprung from the blood of the gods, form 
the connecting link between them and the ordinary herd of mankind. 

§ 3. Doubtless such a notion of the gods as we have just described 
was entirely satisfactory to the princes of Ithaca, or any other Greek 
territory, who assembled in the hall of the chief king at the common 
meal, and to whom some bard sung the newest song of the bold adven- 
tures of heroes. But how could this religion satisfy the mere country- 
man, who wished to believe that in seed-time and in harvest, in winter 
and in summer, the divine protection was thrown over him ; who 
anxiously sought to offer his thanks to the gods for all kinds of rural 
prosperity, for the warding ofF of all danger from the seed and from the 
cattle ? As the heroic age of the Greek nation was preceded by another, 
in which the cultivation of the land, and the nature of the different 
districts, occupied the chief attention of the inhabitants (which may 
be called the Pelasgian period), so likewise there are sufficient traces 
and remnants of a state of the Grecian religion, in which the gods were 
considered as exhibiting their power chiefly in the operations of outward 
nature, in the changes of the seasons, and the phenomena of the year. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 13 

Imagination — whose operations are most active, and whose expressions 
are most simple and natural in the childhood both of nations and indi- 
viduals — led these early inhabitants to discover, not only in the general 
phenomena of vegetation, the unfolding and death of the leaf and 

flower, and in the moist and dry seasons of the year, but also in the 
peculiar physical character of certain districts, a sign of the alternately 
hostile or peaceful, happy or ill-omened coincidence of certain deities. 
There are still preserved in the Greek mythology many legends of a 
charming, and at the same time touching simplicity, which hud their 
origin at this period, when the Greek religion bore the character of a 
worship of the powers of Nature. It sometimes also occurs that those 
parts of mythology which refer to the origin of civil society, to the 
alliances of princes, and to military expeditions, are closely interwoven 
with mythical narratives, which when minutely examined are found to 
contain nothing definite on the acts of particular heroes, but only describe 
physical phenomena, and other circumstances of a general character, 
and which have been combined with the heroic fables only through a 
forgetfulness of their original form ; a confusion which natural y arose, 
when in later times the original connexion of the gods with the agencies 
of Nature was more and more forgotten, and those of their attributes and 
acts which had reference to the conduct of human life, the government 
of states, or moral principles, were perpetually brought into more pro- 
minent notice. It often happens that the original meaning of narratives 
of this kind may be deciphered when it had been completely hidden 
from the most learned mythologists of antiquity. But though this 
process of investigation is often laborious, and may, after all, lead only to 
uncertain results, yet it is to be remembered that the mutilation and 
obscuring of the ancient mythological legends by the poets of laier times 
affords the strongest proof of their high antiquity ; as the most ancient 
buildings are most discoloured and impaired by time. 

§ 4. An inquiry, of which the object should be to select and unite all 
the parts of the Greek mythology which have reference to natural 
phenomena and the changes of the seasons, although it has never been 
regularly undertaken, would doubtless show that the earliest religion of 
the Greeks was founded on the same notions as the chief part of the 
religions of the East, particularly of that part of the East which was 
nearest to Greece,!' Asia Minor. The Greek mind, however, even in 
this the earliest of its productions, appears richer and more various in its 
forms, and at the same time to take a loftier and a wider range, than is 
the case in the religion of the oriental neighbours of the Greeks, the 
Phrygians, Lydians, and Syrians. In the religion of these nations, the 
combination and contrast of two beings (Baal and Astarte), the one male, 
representing the productive, and the other female, representing the 
passive and nutritive powers of Nature, and the alternation of two 
states, viz., the strength and vigour, and the weakness and death of 



14 HISTORY OF THE 

the male personification of Nature, of which the first was celebrated 
with vehement joy, the latter with e\cessi\e lamentation, recur in a 
perpetual cycle, which must in the end have wearied and stupihed the 
mind. The Grecian worship of Nature, on the other hand, in all the 
various /onus which it assumed in different places, places one deity, as 
the highest of all, at the head of the entire system, the God of heaven 
and light ; for that this is the meaning of the name Zeus is shown by 
the occurrence of the same root {Din) with the same signification, even 
ill the Sanscrit*, and by the preservation of several of its derivatives 
which remained in common use both in Greek and Latin, all containing 
the notion of heaven and day. With this god of the heavens, who 
dwells in the pure expanse of ether, is associated, though not as a being 
of the same rank, the goddess of the Earth, who in different temples 
(which may be considered as the mother-churches of the Grecian 
religion) was worshipped under different names, Hera, Demeter, Dione, 
and some others of less celebrity. The marriage of Zeus with this god- 
dess (which signified the union of heaven and earth in the fertilizing 
rains) was a sacred solemnity in the worship of these deities. Besides 
this goddess, other beings are associated on one side with the Supreme 
God, who are personifications of certain of his energies ; powerful deities 
who carry the influence of light over the earth, and destroy the opposing 
powers of darkness and confusion : as Athena, born from the head of 
her father, in the height of the heavens ; and Apollo, the pure and 
shining god of a worship belonging to other races, but who even in 
his original form was" a god of light. On the other side are deities, 
allied with the earth and dwelling in her dark recesses; and as all 
life appears not only to spring from the earth, but to return to that 
whence it sprung, these deities are for the most part also connected with 
death : a3 Hermes, who brings up the treasures of fruitfulness from the 
depth of the earth, and the child, now lost and now recovered by her 
mother Demeter, Cora, the goddess both of flourishing and of decaying 
Nature. It was natural to expect that the element of water {Poseidon) 
should also be introduced into this assemblage of the personified powers 
of Nature, and should be peculiarly combined with the goddess of the 
Earth : and that fire {Hephcestus) should be represented as a powerful 
principle derived from heaven and having dominion on the earth, and 
be closely allied with the goddess who sprang from the head of the god 
of the heavens. Other deities are less important and necessary parts of 
this system, as Aphrodite, whose worship was evidently for the most part 
propagated over Greece from Cyprus and Cythera f by the influence of 

* The root DIU is most clearly seen in the oblique cases of Zeus, A/Fo? A/F/, in which 
the U has passed into the consonant form F : whereas in Zsb;, as in other Greek 
words, the sound DI has passed into Z, and the vowel has been lengthened. In the 
Latin Iovi.s (luve in Umbrian) the D has been lost before I, which, however, is pre- 
served in many other derivatives of the same root, as dies, dium. 

f See Herod, i. 105 : and Hist, of Rome, pp. 121, 122. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 15 

Syrophconician tribes. As a singular being, howe\er, in the assembly of 
Hit' Greek deities, stands the changeable god of flourishing, decaying, and 
renovated Nature, Dionytw 9 whose alternate joys and sufferings, and mar- 
vellous adventures, show a strong- resemblance to the form which religious 
notions assumed in Asia Minor. Introduced by the Thracians (a tribe 
which spread from the north of Greece into the interior of the country), 
and not, like the gods of Olympus, recognized by all the races of the 
Greeks, Dionysus always remained to a certain degree estranged from the 
rest ef the gods, although his attributes had evidently most affinity with 
those of Demeter and Cora. But in this isolated position, Dionysus 
exercises an important influence on the spirit of the Greek nation, and 
both in sculpture and poetry gives rise to a class of feelings which agree 
in displaying more powerful emotions of the mind, a bolder flight of the 
imagination, and more acute sensations of pain and pleasure, than were 
exhibited on occasions where this influence did not operate. 

§ 5. In like manner the Homeric poems (which instruct us not 
merely by their direct statements, but also by their indirect allusions, not 
only by what they say, but also by what they do not say), when atten- 
tively considered, clearly show how this ancient religion of nature sank 
into the shade as compared with the salient and conspicuous forms of 
the deities of the heroic age. The gods who dwell on Olympus scarcely 
appear at all in connexion with natural phenomena. Zeus chiefly 
exercises his powers as a ruler and a king ; although he is still designated 
(by epithets doubtless of high antiquity) as the god of the ether and 
the storms*; as in much later times the old picturesque expression was 
used, "What is Zeus doing?" for " What kind of weather is it?" In 
the Homeric conception of Hera, Athena, and Apollo, there is no trace 
of any reference of these deities to the fertility of the earth, the clearness 
of the atmosphere, the arrival of the serene spring, and the like ; which, 
however, can be discovered in other mythical legends concerning them, 
and still more in the ceremonies practised at their festivals, which 
generally contain the most ancient ideas. Hephaestus has passed from 
the powerful god of fire in heaven and in earth into a laborious smith 
and worker of metals, who performs his duty by making armour and 
arms for the other gods and their favourite heroes. As to Hermes, there 
are some stories in which he is represented as giving fruitfulness to cattle, 
in his capacity of the rural god of Arcadia; from which, by means of 
\arious metamorphoses, he is transmuted into the messenger of Zeus, 
and the servant of the gods. 

Those deities, however, which stood at a greater distance from the 
relations of human life, and especially from the military and political 
actions of the princes, and could not easily be brought into connexion 
with them, are for that reason rarely mentioned by Homer, and never 
take any part in the events described by him ; in general they keep aloof 



16 HISTORY OF THE 

from the circle of the Olympic gods. Demeter is never mentioned as 
assisting any hero, or rescuing him from danger, or stimulating him to 

the battle ; but if any one were thence to inter that this goddess was not 
known as early as Homer's time, he would be refuted by the incidental 
allusions to her which frequently occur in connexion with agriculture 
and corn. Doubtless Demeter (whose name denotes the earth as 
the mother and author of life*) was in the ancient Pelasgic time 
honoured with a general and public worship beyond any other deity ; but 
the notions and feelings excited by the worship of this goddess and 
her daughter (whom she beheld, with deep lamentation, torn from her 
every autumn, and recovered with excessive joy every spring) constantly 
became more and more unlike those which were connected with the other 
gods of Olympus. Hence her worship gradually obtained a peculiar 
form, and chiefly from this cause assumed the character of mysteries: 
that is, religious solemnities, in which no one could participate without 
having undergone a previous ceremony of admission and initiation. In 
this manner Homer was, by a just and correct taste, led to perceive that 
Demeter, together with the other divine beings belonging to her, had 
nothing in common with the gods whom the epic muse assembled about 
the throne of Zeus ; and it was the same feeling which also prevented him 
from mixing up Dionysus, the other leading deity of the mystic worship 
of the Greeks, with the subject of his poem, although this god is 
mentioned by him as a divine being, of a marvellous nature, stimu- 
lating the mind to joy and enthusiasm. 



CHAPTER III. 

§ 1. First efforts of Greek poetry. Plaintive songs of husbandmen. — § 2. Descrip- 
tion of several of these songs, viz. the Linus. — § 3. The Ialemus, the Scephrus, 
the Lityerses, the Bormus, the Maneros, and the laments for Orpheus and Adonis. 
— § 4. The Paean, its origin and character. — § 5. The Threnos, or lament for the 
dead, and the Hymenceos, or bridal song. — § 6. Origin and character of the chorus. 
— § 7. Ancient poets who composed sacred hymns, divided into three classes, viz. 
those connected, i. With the worship of Apollo; ii. With the worship of Demeter 
and Dionysus ; and iii. With the Phrygian worship of the mother of the Gods, of 
the Corybantes, &c. — § 8. Explanation of the Thracian origin of several of the 
early Greek poets. — § 9. Influence of the early Thracian or Pierian poets on the 
epic poetry of Homer. 

§ 1. Many centuries must have elapsed before the poetical language of 
the Greeks could have attained the splendour, the copiousness, and the 
fluency which so strongly excite our admiration in the poems of Homer. 
The service of the gods, to which all the highest energies of the mind 
were first directed, and from which the first beginnings of sculpture, 

* A?? fitirnp, that is, y>j p.wrnp> 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 17 

architecture, music, and poetry proceeded, must for a long time have 
consisted chiefly in mute motions of the body, in symbolical gestures, in 

prayers muttered in a low tone, and, lastly, in loud broken ejaculations 
(dXoXvyuoc), such as were in later times uttered at the death of the 
victim, in token of an inward feeling ; before the winged word issued 
clearly from the mouth, and raised the feelings of the multitude to 
religious enthusiasm — in short, before the first hymn was heard. 

The first outpourings of poetical enthusiasm were doubtless songs 
describing-, in few and simple verses, events which powerfully affected 
the feeling's of the hearers. From what has been said in the last chapter 
it is probable that the earliest date may be assigned to the songs which 
referred to the seasons and their phenomena, and expressed with sim- 
plicity the notions and feelings to which these events gave birth : as 
they were sung by peasants at the corn and wine harvest, they had their 
origin in times of ancient rural simplicity. It is remarkable that songs 
of this kind often had a plaintive and melancholy character ; which cir- 
cumstance is however explained when we remember that the ancient 
worship of outward nature (which was preserved in the rites of Demeter 
and Cora, and also of Dionysus) contained festivals of wailing and 
lamentation as well as of rejoicing and mirth. 1 1 is not, however, to 
be supposed that this was the only cause of the mournful ditties in 
question, for the human heart has a natural disposition to break out 
from time to time into lamentation, and to seek an occasion for grief 
even where it does not present itself — as Lucretius says, that " in the 
pathless woods, among the lonely dwellings of the shepherds, the sweet 
laments were sounded on the pipe*." 

§ 2. To the number of these plaintive ditties belongs the song Linus, 
mentioned by Homer t, the melancholy character of which is shown by 
its fuller names, AiXivog and OItoXlvoq (literally, " Alas, Linus !" and 
" Death of Linus"). It was frequently sung in Greece, according to 
Homer, at the grape-picking. According to a fragment of HesiodJ, 
all singers and players on the cithara lament at feasts and dances Linus, 
the beloved son of Urania, and call on Linus at the beginning and the 
end ; which probably means that the song of lamentation began and 
ended with the exclamation At Ahe. Linus was originally the subject 
of the song, the person whose fate was bewailed in it ; and there were 
many districts in Greece (for example, Thebes, Chalcis, and Argos) in 
which tombs of Linus were shown. This Linus evidently belongs to 
a class of deities or demigods, of which many instances occur in the 

* Inde mmutatim dulcet* didicere quere/ax, 
Tibia quas fuodit digitis pulsata eanentum, 
Avia per nemora ac sylvas saltusque reperta, 
Per loca pastorum deserta atqua otia dm. — Lucretius, v. 13S3 — 138G. 
f Iliad, xviii. 5G9. 
\ Cited ia Eustathius, p. 1163 (fragm. 1, od. Gaisfurd). 

c 



L6 



HISTORY OF THE 



religions of Greece and Asia Minor; boys of extraordinary beauty, and 
in the flower of youth, who are supposed to have been drowned, or de- 
voured by raging dogs, OF destroyed by wild beasts, and whose death is 
lamented in the harvest or other periods of the hot season. It is obvious 
that these cannot have been real persons, whose death excited so general 
a s\ mpathy, although the fables which were offered in explanation of 
these customs often speak of youths of royal blood, who were carried off 
in the prime of their life. The real object of lamentation was the tender 
beauty of spring 1 destroyed by the summer heat, and other phenomena 
of the same kind, which the imagination of these early times invested 
with a personal form, and represented as gods or beings of a divine 
nature. According to the very remarkable and explicit tradition of the 
Argives, Linus was a youth, who, having sprung from a divine origin, 
grew up with the shepherds among the lambs, and was torn in pieces by 
wild dogs ; whence arose the " festival of the lambs," at which many 
dogs were slain. Doubtless this festival was celebrated during the 
greatest heat, at the time of the constellation Sirius; the emblem of 
which, among the Greeks, was, from the earliest times, a raging dog*. 
It was a natural confusion of the tradition that Linus should afterwards 
become a minstrel, one of the earliest bards of Greece, who begins a 
contest with Apollo himself, and overcomes Hercules in playing on the 
cithara ; even, however, in this character Linus meets his death, and 
we must probably assume that his fate was mentioned in the ancient 
song. In Homer the Linus is represented as sung by a boy, who plays 
at the same time on the harp, an accompaniment usually mentioned with 
this song ; the young men and women who bear the grapes from the 
vineyard follow him, moving onward with a measured step, and uttering 
a shrill cry*, in which probably the chief stress was laid on the excla- 
mation a* Xii'c. That this shrill cry (called by Homer tuy/ioc) was not 
necessarily a joyful strain will be admitted by any one who has heard 
the Ivyfxbc of the Swiss peasants, with its sad and plaintive notes, 
resounding from hill to hill. 

§ 3. Plaintive songs of this kind, in which not the misfortunes of a 
single individual, but an universal and perpetually recurring cause of 
grief was expressed, abounded in ancient Greece, and especially in Asia 
Minor, the inhabitants of which country had a peculiar fondness for 
mournful tunes. The Ialemus seems to have been nearly identical with 
the Linus, as, to a certain extent, the same mythological narrations are 
applied to both. At Tegea, in Arcadia, there was a plaintive song, 
called Scephrus, which appears, from the fabulous relation in Pausaniasf, 

* To7<riv 5' iv (jAtraoHTt wait (p'o^Ayyi y.iyur,, 
ifttpitt x.i&d.PiZ,i. A/'v«v §' vto zctXov ccu^t 
kiTTuXiy, tpuvr' roi o\ p'/itrirovTis u./j.o.p't'y) 
f^o'/.-rry, r' ivyfiS re. iroei t?xuioo'j~i; tzrov-ro.— -Iliad, XV111. o()9 — D/2j 

on the meaning of y-ok-ry, in this passage, see below, § 6. 
t viii. 53, 2. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 19 

to have been sung at the time of the summer heat. In Phrygia, a 
melancholy song', called Lihjerscs, was sung at the cutting of the corn. 
At the same season of (he year, the MariandynianB, on the shores of 
the Black Sea, played the mournful ditty Bormua on the native flute. 
The subject of their lamentation may be easily conjectured from the 
Story that Bormua was a beautiful boy, who, having- gone to fetch water 
for the reapers in the heat of the day, was, while drawing it, borne down 
by the nymphs of the stream. Of similar meaning are the cries for the 
youth Hylas y swallowed up by the waters of the fountain, which, in the 
neighbouring country of the Bithynians, re-echoed from mountain to 
mountain. In the southern parts of Asia Minor we find, in connexion 
with the Syrian worship, a similar lament for Adonis*, whose untimely 
death was celebrated by Sappho, together with Linus ; and the Maneros, 
a song current in Egypt, especially at Pelusium, in which likewise a 
youth, the only son of a king, who died in early youth, was bewailed ; a 
resemblance sufficiently strong to induce Herodotus f, who is always 
ready to find a connexion between Greece and Egypt, to consider .the 
Maneros and the Linus as the same song }. 

§ 4. A very different class of feelings is expressed in another kind of 
songs, which originally were dedicated only to Apollo, and were closely 
connected with the ideas relating to the attributes and actions of this 
god, viz. the pecans (tcolliioveq in Homer). The paeans were songs, of 
which the tune and words expressed courage and confidence. " All 
sounds of lamentation " (aiAiva), says Callimachus, " cease when the 
Ie Paean, Ie Paean, is heard §." As with the Linus the interjection 
cu, so with the Paean the cry of nj was connected ; exclamations, un- 
meaning in themselves, but made expressive by the tone with which 
they were uttered, and which, as has been already mentioned, dated 
back from the earliest periods of the Greek worship ; they were different 
for different deities, and formed as it were the first rudiments of the 
hymns which began and ended with them. Paeans were sung, not 
only when there was a hope of being able, by the help of the gods, to 
overcome a great and imminent danger, but when the danger was 
happily past; they were songs of hope and confidence as well as of 

* Beautifully described in the well-known verses of Milton: — 
" Thammuz came next behind, 
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured 
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate 
In amorous ditties, all a summer's day, 
While smooth Adonis from his native rock 
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood 
Of Thammuz yearly wounded/' — Paradise Lost, i. 44G. 
f ii. 79. 

I On the subject of these plaintive songs generally see Midler's Dorians, book ii. 
ch. 8, § 12 (vol. i. p. 36G, English translation), and Thirlwall in the Philological 
Museum, vol. i. p. 119. 

OTTTTOT lh llutnOV, i?) Ilxiyjo V. I ;;. Hj'ITUi. ApOllt 80, 

C2 



20 



HISTORY OF THE 



thanksgiving for victory and safety. The custom, at the termination ot 
the winter, when the year again assumes a mild and serene aspect, and 

e\er\ heart is filled with hope and confidence, of singing venial pecans 
kcc), recommended by the Delphic oracle to the cities of 
Lower Italy, is probably of very high antiquity. Among the Pythago- 
reans likewise the solemn purification (Va9ap<7tc), which they performed 
in spring, consisted in singing paeans and other hymns sacred to Apollo. 
In Homer*, the Acha?ans, who have restored Chryseis to the priest her 
father, are represented as singing;, at the end of the sacrificial feast, over 
their cups, a paean in honour of the far-darting god, whose wrath they 
thus endeavour completely to appease. And in the same poet, Achilles, 
after the slaughter of Hector, calls on his companions to return to the 
ships, singing a paean, the spirit and tone of which he expresses in the 
following words : " We have gained great glory ; we have slain the 
divine Hector, to whom the Trojans in the city prayed as to a god f." 
From these passages it is evident that the paean was sung by several 
persons, one of whom probably led the others (i^ap^wv), and that the 
singers of the paean either sat together at table (which w r as still custo- 
mary at Athens in Plato's time), or moved onwards in a body. Of the 
latter mode of singing a paean the hymn to the Pythian Apollo fur- 
nishes an example, where the Cretans, who have been called by the 
god as priests of his sanctuary at Pytho, and have happily performed a 
miraculous voyage from their own island after the sacrificial feast which 
they celebrate on the shores of Crissa, afterwards ascend to Pytho, in 
the narrow valley of Parnassus. " Apollo leads them, holding his harp 
((popfiiyL,) in his hand, playing [beautifully, with a noble and lofty 
step. The Cretans follow him in a measured pace, and sing, after the 
Cretin fashion, an Iepaean, which sweet song the muse had placed in 
their breasts i." From this paean, which was sung by a moving body 
of persons, arose the use of the paean (ttcuwviZeu') in war, before the 
attack on the enemy, which seems to have prevailed chiefly among the 
Doric nations, and does not occur in Homer. 

If it was our purpose to seek merely probable conclusions, or if 
the nature of the present work admitted a detailed investigation, in 
which we might collect and combine a variety of minute particles of 
evidence, we could perhaps show that many of the later descriptions 
of hymns belonging to the separate worships of Artemis, Demeter, 
Dionysus, and other gods, originated in the earliest period of Greek 
literature. As, however, it seems advisable in this work to avoid 
merely conjectural inquiries, we will proceed to follow up the traces 
which occur in the Homeric poems, and to postpone the other matters 
until we come to the history of lyric poetry. 

§ 5. Not only the common and public worship of the Gods, but also 

* Iliad, i. 473. f Ihad, x xii. Wl. J Horn. Hymn. Apoll. 514. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 21 

those events of private life which strongly excited the feelings, called 
forth the gift of poetry. The lamentation for the. dead, which was 
chiefly sung by women with vehement expressions of grief, had, at the 
time described by Homer, already been so far s)stematised, that singers 
by profession stood near the bed where the body was laid out, and began 
the lament ; and while they sang it, the women accompanied them with 
cries and groans*. These singers of the thrcnos were at the burial of 
Achilles represented by the Muses themselves, who sang the lament, 
while the sisters of Thetis, the Nereids, uttered the same cries of 
grieff. 

Opposed to the threnos is the Hymenccos, the joyful and merry bridal 
song, of which there are descriptions by Homer £ in the account of the 
designs on the shield of Achilles, and by Hesiod in that of the shield of 
Hercules §. Homer speaks of a city, represented as the seat of bridal 
rejoicing, in which the bride is led from the virgin's apartment through 
the streets by the light of torches. A loud hymenaeos arises : young 
men dance around ; while flutes and harps (<£oppyy£e) resound. The 
passage of Hesiod gives a more finished and indeed a well-grouped 
picture, if the parts of it are properly distinguished, which does not 
appear to have been hitherto done with sufficient exactness. According 
to this passage, the scene is laid in a fortified city, in which men can 
abandon themselves without fear to pleasure and rejoicing : " Some bear 
the bride to the husband on the well-formed chariot; while a loud 
hymenaeos arises. Burning torches, carried by boys, cast from afar their 
light: the damsels (viz., those who raise the hymenaeos) move forwards 
beaming with beauty. Both (i. e. both the youths who draw the car 
and the damsels) are followed by joyful choruses. The one chorus, con- 
sisting of youths (who have drawn the car), sings to the clear sound of the 
pipe ((TvpiyH,) with tender mouths, and causes the echoes to resound : the 
other, composed of damsels (forming the hymenaeos, properly so called), 
dance to the notesjof the harp (0oppy£)." In this passage of Hesiod we 
have also the first description of a co?nos, by which word the Greeks de- 
signate the last part of a feast or any other banquet which is enlivened 
and prolonged with music, singing, and other amusements, until the 
order of the table is completely deranged, and the half-intoxicated guests 
go in irregular bodies through the town, often to the doors of beloved 
damsels : " On another side again comes, accompanied by flutes, a joy- 
ous band (/ow/uoe) of youths, some amusing themselves with the song and 
the dance, others with laughter. Each of these youths moves onwards, 
attended by a player on the flute (precisely as may be seen so often re- 
presented on vases of a much later age, belonging to southern Italy). 

* aoilo) 6%wm s&gxoi. — Iliad, xxiv. 720 — 722. 
f Odyssey, xxiv. 59— Gl. + Iliad, xviii. 492—495. 

§ Scut. 274— 280. 



22 HISTORY OF THE 

The whole city is filled with joy, and dancing, and festivity*." The 
circumstances connected with the eomos afforded (as we shall hereafter 
point out) many opportunities for the productions of the lyric muse, 
both of a lofty and serious and of a comic and erotic description. 

§ 6. Although In the above description, and in other passages of 
the ancient epic poets, choruses are frequently mentioned, yet we are 
not to suppose that the choruses of this early period were like those 
which sang the odes of Pindar and the choral song's of the tragedians, 
and accompanied them with dancing and appropriate action. Originally 
the chorus had chiefly to do with dancing : the most ancient sense of the 
word chorus is a place for dancing : hence in the Iliad and Odyssey ex- 
pressions occur, such as levelling the chorus (Xeialpeiv yppov), that is, 
making the place ready for dancing ; going to the chorus (xopov^e 
epxwOai), &c. : hence the choruses and dwellings of the gods are 
mentioned together ; and cities which had spacious squares are said to 
have wide choruses (evpvxopoi). To these choruses young persons of 
both sexes, the daughters as well as the sons of the princes and nobles, 
are represented 'jn Homer as going : at these the Trojan and Phaeacian 
princes are described as being present in newly-washed garments and 
in well-made armour. There were also, at least in Crete, choruses in 
which young men and women danced together in rows, holding one 
another by the hands t: a custom which was in later times unknown 
among the Ionians and Athenians, but which was retained among the 
Dorians of Crete and Sparta, as well as in Arcadia. The arrangement 
of a chorus of this description is as follows : a citharist sits in the midst 
of the dancers, who surround him in a circle, and plays on the phorminx, 
a kind of cithara : in the place of which (according to the Homeric hymn 
to Hermes) another stringed instrument, the lyre, which differed in some 
respects, was sometimes used ; whereas the flute, a foreign, originally 
Phrygian, instrument, never in these early times was used at the chorus, 
but only at the comos, with whose boisterous and unrestrained character its 
tones were more in harmony. This citharist also accompanies the sound 
of his instrument with songs, which appear to have scarcely differed from 
such as were sung by individual minstrels, without the presence of a 
chorus ; as, for example, Demodocus, in the palace of the Phaeacian 
king, sings the loves of Ares and Aphrodite during the dances of the 
youths J. Hence he is said to begin the song and the dance §. The 
other persons, who form the chorus, take no part in this song ; except 
so far as they allow their movements to be guided by it : an accompa- 
niment of the voice by the dancers, such as has been already remarked 
with respect to the singers of the paean, does not occur among the 
chorus-dancers of these early times : and Ulysses, in looking at the 
Phaeacian youths who form the chorus to the song of Demodocus, 

* Scut. 281—285. f Iliad, xviii. 593. J Odyssey, viii. 266. 

§ ftoktfyjf i%Kg%av.-— Iliad, xviii. 606. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 23 

admires not the sweetness of their voices, or the excellence of their 
singing, but the rapid motions of their feet*. At the same time, 
the reader must guard against a misapprehension of the terms poXiHi and 

/xeX-n-Eadai, which, although they are sometimes applied to persona 
dancing, as to the chorus of Artemis f, and to Artemis herself}, neverthe- 
less are not always connected with singing, but express any measured and 
graceful movement of the body, as for instance even a game at ball §. 
When, however, the Muses are described as singing in a chorus ||, 
they are to be considered only as standing in a circle, with Apollo in 
the centre as citharist, but not as also dancing : in the prooemium to the 
Theogony of Hesiod, they are described as first dancing in chorus on 
the top of Helicon, and afterwards as moving through the dark, and 
singing the race of the immortal gods. 

In the dances of the choruses there appears, from the descriptions 
of the earliest poets, to have been much variety and art, as in the 
choral dance which Vulcan represented on the shield of Achilles^": — 
" At one time the youths and maidens dance around nimbly, with 
measured steps, as when a potter tries his wheel whether it will run ; at 
another, they dance in rows opposite to one another (a dance in a ring 
alternately with one in rows). Within this chorus sits a singer with the 
phorminx, and two tumblers (KvpiaTrjrfjpe, the name being derived from 
the violent motions of the body practised by them) turn about in the 
middle, in accordance with the song." In a chorus celebrated by the 
gods, as described in one of the Homeric hymns**, this latter part is 
performed by Ares and Hermes, who gesticulate (iralfrvai) in the 
middle of a chorus formed by ten goddesses as dancers, while Apollo 
plays on the cithara, and the Muses stand around and sing. It cannot 
be doubted that these Kvj3i(XTr]TfjpeQ, or tumblers (who occurred chiefly in 
Crete, where a lively, and even wild and enthusiastic style of dancino* 
had prevailed from early times), in some measure regulated their ges- 
tures and motions according to the subject of the song to which they 
danced, and that a choral dance of this kind was, in fact, a variety of 
hyporcheme (v7r6pxr)fJ-a), as a species of choral dances and songs was 
called, in which the action described by the song was at the same time 
represented with mimic gestures by certain individuals who came forward 

* {ict,£pa,£vyou xobuv. — Odyssey, viii. 265. 
t Iliad, xvi. 182. J Hymn. Pyth. Apoll. 19. 

§ abrag \<rtii al<rov ra^tphv ^f&acti n xa) ccvrh, 
fftpxigri rai r kg stoci^ov kiro xQWiftva. fiuXovcroti . 
<rri<rt tl tJocva-iKoia. XivKuXivo; ij(>%zro fiaX<7rri$. — Odyssey, vi. 1 Oi . 

Compare Iliad, xviii. 604: lolu Ti xufiurrwrYiPt hut' oclrov; 

ju.oX<rris V^d.px,ovri? Qlvsvov Kara, ft'urtrou;. 
|| Hesiod. Scut. 201—205. 
^[ Iliad, xviii. 591 — 606. Compare Odyssey, iv. 17 — 19. It is doubtful whether 
the latter part of the description in the Iliad has not heen improperly introduced 
into the text from the passage, in the Odyssey. — Editor. 

** Hymn, Horn, ad Apoll. Pyth. 10—26. 



24 



HISTORY OF THE 



from the chorus. This description of choral dances always, in later 
times, occurs in connexion with the worship of Apollo, which prevailed 
to a great extent in Crete ; in Delos likewise, the birth-place of Apollo, 
there were several dances of this description, one of which represented 
the wanderings of Latona before the birth of that god. This circum- 
stance appears to be referred to in a passage of the ancient Homeric 
hymn to the Delian Apollo*, where the Delian damsels in the service 
of Apollo are described as first celebrating the gods and heroes, and 
afterwards singing a peculiar kind of hymn, which pleases the assembled 
multitude, and which consists in the imitation of the voices and lan- 
guages of various nations, and in the production of certain sounds by 
some instruments like the Spanish castanets (jep£juj3a\ia<rrvs), accord- 
ing to the manner of the different nations, so that every one might 
imagine that he heard his own voice — for what is more natural than 
to suppose that this was a mimic and orchestic representation of the 
wandering Latona, and all the islands and countries, in which she 
attempted in vain to find a refuge, until she at length reached the 
hospitable Delos? 

§ 7. Having now in this manner derived from the earliest records a 
distinct notion of the kinds of poetry, and its various accompaniments, 
which existed in Greece before the Homeric time, with the exception of 
epic poetry, it will be easier for us to select from the confused mass of 
statements respecting the early composers of hymns which are contained 
in later writers, that which is most consonant to the character of remote 
antiquity. The best accounts of these early bards were those which had 
been preserved at the temples, at the places where hymns were sung 
under their names : hence it appears that most of these names are in 
constant connexion with the worship of peculiar deities; and it will thus 
be easy to distribute them into certain classes, formed by the resemblance 
of their character and their reference to the same worship. 

i. Singers, who belong to the worship of AjjoIIo in Delphi, Delos, and 
Crete. Among these is Olen, according to the legend, a Lycian or 
Hyperborean, that is to say, sprung from a country where Apollo loved 
to dwell. Many ancient hymns, attributed to him, were preserved at 
Delos, which are mentioned by Herodotus f, and which contained 
remarkable mythological traditions and significant appellatives of the 
gods; also no?nes, that is, simple and antique songs, combined with 
certain fixed tunes, and fitted to be sung for the circular dance of a 
chorus. The Delphian poetess Boeo called him the first prophet of 
Phoebus, and the first who, in early times, founded the style of singing 
in epic metre (iicitav aotcd) \. Another of these bards is Philammon, 
whose name was celebrated at Parnassus, in the territory of Delphi. To 
him was referred the formation of Delphian choruses of virgins, which 
sung the birth of Latona and of her children. It is plain, from what 
* v. 161—164. t iv. 35. * Pausan. x. 5, 8. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 2i) 

has been already observed, that so far as these songs really originated in 
the ancient mythical period, they were intended to be sung, not by a 
dancing chorus, but by an individual to the choral dance. Lastly, Chry- 
sothemis, a Cretan, who is said to have sung the first chorus to the 
Pythian Apollo, clothed in the solemn dress of ceremony, which the 
citharodi in later times wore at the Pythian games. 

ii. Singers in connexion with the cognate worships of Demetcr and 
Dionysvs. Among these were the Eumolpids in Eleusis of Attica — a 
race which, from early times, took part in the worship of Demeter, and 
in the historical age exercised the chief sacerdotal function connected 
with it, the office of Hierophant. These Eumolpids evidently derived 
their name of "beautiful singers" from their character (from ev /je\- 
7T£ff0at), and their original employment was the singing of sacred 
hymns ; it will be afterwards shown that this function agrees well with 
the fact, that their progenitor, the original Eumolpus, is called a Thracian. 
Also another Attic house, the Lycomids (which likewise had in later 
times a part in the Eleusinian worship of Demeter), were in the habit 
of singing hymns, and, moreover, hymns ascribed to Orpheus, Musaeus, 
and Pamphus. Of the songs which were attributed to Pamphus we 
may form a general idea, by remembering that he is said to have first 
sung the strain of lamentation at the tomb of Linus. The name of 
Musaeus (which in fact only signified a singer inspired by the Muses) is 
in Attica generally connected with songs for the initiations of Demeter. 
Among the numerous works ascribed to him, a hymn to Demeter is 
alone considered by Pausanias as genuine*; but however obscure may 
be the circumstances belonging to this name, thus much at least is 
clear, that music and poetry were combined at an early period with 
this worship. Musaeus is in tradition commonly called a Thracian ; he 
is also reckoned as one of the race of Eumolpids, and stated to be 
the disciple of Orpheus. The Thracian singer, Orpheus, is unquestion- 
ably the darkest point in the entire history of the early Grecian poetry, 
on account of the scantiness of the accounts respecting him, which have 
been preserved in the more ancient writers — the lyric poets, Ibycus f 
and Pindar J, the historians Hellanicus § and Pherecydes ||, and the 
Athenian tragedians, containing the first express testimonies of his 
name. This deficiency is ill supplied by the multitude of marvellous 
stories concerning him, which occur in later writers, and by the poems 
and poetical fragments which are extant under the name of Orpheus. 

* i. 22, 7. Compare iv. 1, 5. 

t Ibycus in Priscian, vi. 18, 92, torn. i. p. 283, ed. Krehl. (Fragm. 22, ed. Schnei- 
dewin), who calls him ovopuxXuros 'O^j. Ibycus flourished 560 — 40, b. c. 

J Pyth. iv.315. 

§ Hellanicus in Proclus on Hesiod's Works and Days, 631 (Fragm. 75, ed. Sturz), 
and in Proclus *i(i 'O^eu in Gaisford's Hephaestion, p. 466 (Fragm. 145, ed. 
Sturz). 

|| Pherecydes in Schol, Apollon. i. 23 (Fragm, 18, ed. Sturz). 



26 HISTORY OP THE 

These spurious productions of later times will be treated in that part of 
our history to which they may with the greatest probability be referred : 
here we will only state our opinion that the name of Orpheus, and the 
legends respecting him, are intimately connected with the idea and the 
worship of a Dionysus dwelling in the infernal regions (Zaypevg), and 
that the foundation of this worship (which was connected with the 
Eleusinian mysteries), together with the composition of hymns and 
songs for its initiations (reXeral), was the earliest function ascribed to him . 
Nevertheless, under the influence of various causes, the fame of Orpheus 
grew so much, that he was considered as the first minstrel of the heroic 
age, was made the companion of the Argonauts*, and the marvels 
which music and poetry wrought on a rude and simple generation were 
chiefly described under his name. 

hi. Singers and musicians, who belonged to the Phrygian worship 
of the great mother of the gods, of the Corybantes, and other similar 
beings. The Phrygians, allied indeed to the Greeks, yet a separate and 
distinct nation, differed from their neighbours in their strong disposition 
to an orgiastic worship — that is, a worship which was connected with 
a tumult and excitement produced by loud music and violent bodily 
movements, such as occurred in Greece at the Bacchanalian rejoicings ; 
where, however, it never, as in Phrygia, gave its character to every 
variety of divine worship. With this worship was connected the deve- 
lopment of a peculiar kind of music, especially on the flute, which in- 
strument was always considered in Greece to possess a stimulating and 
passion-stirring force. This, in the Phrygian tradition, was ascribed to 
the demi-god Marsyas, who is known as the inventor of the flute, and 
the unsuccessful opponent of Apollo, to his disciple Olympus, and, 
lastly, to Hyagnis, to whom also the composition of nomes to the Phry- 
gian gods in a native melody was attributed. A branch of this worship, 
and of the style of music and dancing belonging to it, spread at an early 
date to Crete, the earliest inhabitants of which island appear to have 
been allied to the Phrygians. 

§ 8. By far the most remarkable circumstance in these accounts of the 
earliest minstrels of Greece is, that several of them (especially from the 
second of the three classes just described) are called Thracians. It is 
utterly inconceivable that, in the later historic times, when the Thracians 
were contemned as a barbarian racef, a notion should have sprung up, 
that the first civilisation of Greece was due to them ; consequently we 
cannot doubt that this was a tradition handed down from a very early 
period. Now, if we are to understand it to mean that Eumolpus, 
Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris, were the fellow-countrymen of those 
Edonians, Odrysians, and Odomantians, who in the historical age 
occupied the Thracian territory, and who spoke a barbarian language, 

* Pindar, Pyth. iv. 315. f See, for example, Thucyd. vii. 29. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 27 

that is, one unintelligible to the Greeks, we must despair of being able 
to comprehend these accounts of the ancient Thracian minstrels, and of 
assigning them a place in the history of Grecian civilisation ; since it is 
manifest that at this early period, when there was scarcely any inter- 
course between different nations, or knowledge of foreign tongues, poets 
who sang in an unintelligible language could not have had more influence 
on the mental development of the people than the twittering of birds. 
Nothing but the dumb language of mimicry and dancing, and musical 
strains independent of articulate speech, can at such a period pass from 
nation to nation, as, for example, the Phrygian music passed over to 
Greece ; whereas the Thracian minstrels are constantly represented as 
the fathers of poetry \ which of course is necessarily combined with 
language. When we come to trace more precisely the country of these 
Thracian bards, we find that the traditions refer to Pieria, the district 
to the east of the Olympus range, to the north of Thessaly and the south 
of Emathia or Macedonia ; in Pieria likewise was Leibethra, where the 
Muses are said to have sung the lament over the tomb of Orpheus : the 
ancient poets, moreover, always make Pieria, not Thrace, the native place 
of the Muses, which last Homer clearly distinguishes from Pieria*. It 
was not until the Pierians were pressed in their own territory by the early 
Macedonian princes that some of them crossed the Strymon into Thrace 
Proper, where Herodotus mentions the castles of the Pierians at the 
expedition of Xerxes f. It is, however, quite conceivable, that in early 
times, either on account of their close vicinity, or because all the north 
was comprehended under one name, the Pierians might, in Southern 
Greece, have been called Thracians. These Pierians, from the intel- 
lectual relations which they maintained with the Greeks, appear to be a 
Grecian race ; which supposition is also confirmed by the Greek names 
of their places, rivers, fountains, &c, although it is probable that, situated 
on the limits of the Greek nation, they may have borrowed largely from 
neighbouring tribes {. A branch of the Phrygian nation, so devoted to 
an enthusiastic worship, once dwelt close to Pieria, at the foot of Mount 
Bermius, where King Midas was said to have taken the drunken Silenus 
in his rose-gardens. In the whole of this region a wild and enthusiastic 
worship of Bacchus was diffused among both men and women. It may 
be easily conceived that the excitement which the mind thus received 
contributed to prepare it for poetical enthusiasm. These same Thracians 
or Pierians lived, up to the time of the Doric and iEolic migrations, in 
certain districts of Bceotia and Phocis. That they had dwelt about the 
Boeotian mountain of Helicon, in the district of Thespiae and Ascra, was 
evident to the ancient historians, as well from the traditions of the cities 
as from the agreement of many names of places in the country near 
Olympus (Leibethrion, Pimpleis, Helicon, &c). At the foot of Parnas- 

* Iliad, xiv. 226. f vii. 112. 

I See Muller's Dorians, vol. i. p. 472, 488, 501. 



28 HISTORY OF THE 

sus, however, in Phocis, was said to have been situated the city of Daulis, 
the seat of the Thracian king* Tereus, who is known by his connexion 
with the Athenian king Pandion, and by the fable of the metamor- 
phosis of his wife Procne into a nightingale. This story (which occurs 
under other forms in several parts of Greece) is one of those simple 
fables which, among the early inhabitants of Greece easily grew from a 
contemplation of the phenomena of Nature and the still life of animals : 
the nightingale, with her sad nocturnal song, seemed to them to lament 
a lost child, whose name Itys, or Ityhis, they imagined that they could 
hear in her notes ; the reason why the nightingale, when a human being, 
was supposed to have dwelt in this district was, that it had the fame of 
being the native country of the art of singing, where the Muses would be 
most likely to impart their gifts to animals ; as in other parts of Greece 
it was said that the nightingales sang sweetly over the grave of the 
ancient minstrel, Orpheus. From what has been said, it appears suffi- 
ciently clear that these Pierians or Thracians, dwelling about Helicon 
and Parnassus in the vicinity of Attica, are chiefly signified when a 
Thracian origin is ascribed to the mythical bards of Attica. 

§ 9. It is an obvious remark, that with these movements of the 
Pierians was also connected the extension of the temples of the Muses 
in Greece, who alone among the gods are represented by the ancient 
poets as presiding over poetry, since Apollo, in strictness, is only con- 
cerned with the music of the cithara. Homer calls the Muses the Olym- 
pian ; in Hesiod, at the beginning of the Theogony, they are called the 
Heliconian, although, according to the notion of the Boeotian poet, they 
were born on Olympus, and dwelt at a short distance from the highest 
pinnacle of this mountain, where Zeus was enthroned ; whence they 
only go at times to Helicon, bathe in Hippocrene, and celebrate their 
choral dances around the altar of Zeus on the top of the mountain. Now, 
when it is borne in mind that the same mountain on which the worship 
of the Muses originally flourished was also represented in the earliest 
Greek poetry 7 as the common abode of the Gods ; in which, whatever 
country they might singly prefer, they jointly assembled about the throne 
of the chief god, it seems highly probable that it was the poets of this 
region, the ancient Pierian minstrels, whose imagination had created this 
council of the gods and had distributed and arranged its parts. Those 
things which the epic poetry of Homer must have derived from earlier 
compositions (such as the first notions concerning the structure of the 
world, the dominions of the Olympian gods and the Titans, the established 
epithets which are applied to the gods, without reference to the peculiar 
circumstances under which they appear, and which often disagree with 
the rest of the epic mythology) probably must, in great measure, be 
referred to these Pierian bards. Moreover, their poetry was doubtless 
not concerned merely with the gods, but contained the first germs of the 
* Apollodoius, i. 3. 3. 



LITERA.TUUE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 29 

epic or heroic style ; more especially should Thamyris, who in Homer is 
called a Thracian, and in other writers a son of Philammon* (by 
which the neighbourhood of Daulis is designated as his abode), be con- 
sidered as an epic poet, although some hymns were ascribed to him : 
for in the account of Homer, that Thamyris, while going from one 
prince to another, and having just returned from Eurytus of Oechalia, 
was deprived both of his eyesight and of his power of singing and play- 
ing on the cithara by the Muses, with whom he had undertaken to 
contend*, it is much more natural to understand a poet, such as Phemius 
and Demodocus, who entertained kings and nobles at meals by the 
narration of heroic adventures, than a singer devoted to the pious service 
of the gods and the celebration of their praises in hymns. 

These remarks naturally lead us to the consideration of the epic style 
of poetry, of which we shall at once proceed to treat. 



CHAPTER IV. 

§ 1. Social position of the minstrels or poets in the heroic age. — § 2. Epic poems 
sung at the feasts of princes and nobles, and at public festivals. — § 3. Manner 
of reciting epic poems ; explanation of rhapsodists and rhapsodising. — § 4. Metrical 
form, and poetical character of the epic poetry. — § 5. Perpetuation of the early 
epic poems by memory and not by writing. — § 6. Subjects and extent of the ante- 
Homeric epic poetry. 

It is our intention in this chapter to trace the Greek Poetry, as far as 
we have the means of following its steps, on its migration from the 
lonely valleys of Olympus and Helicon to all the nations which ruled 
over Greece in the heroic age, and from the sacred groves of the gods 
to the banquets of the numerous princes who then reigned in the dif- 
ferent states of Greece. At the same time we propose, as far as the 
nature of our information permits, to investigate the gradual develop- 
ment of the heroic or epic style of poetry, until it reached the high 
station which it occupies in the poems of Homer. 

In this inquiry the Homeric poems themselves will form the chief 
sources of information ; since to them we are especially indebted for a 
clear, and, in the main, doubtless, a correct picture of the age which we 
term the heroic. The most important feature in this picture is, that 
among the three classes of nobles f, common freemen J, and serfs §, the 
first alone enjoyed consideration both in war and peace ; they alone 
performed exploits in battle, whilst the people appear to be there only 
that these exploits may be performed upon them. In the assembly of 

* Iliad, ii. 594—600. 

•j- Called ccgurroi, ugt<r-~y$s, avaxrif, (ZxtriXvis, piSovrs;, and many other names, i 

% %ypo; (both as a collective and a singular name), Mpov av\n. 

6 luaz;. 



30 HISTORY OF THE 

the people, as in the courts of justice, the nobles alone speak, advise, 
and decide, whilst the people merely listen to their ordinances and 
decisions, in order to regulate their own conduct accordingly; being 
suffered, indeed, to follow the natural impulse of evincing, to a certain 
extent, their approbation or disapprobation of their superiors, but still 
without any legal means of giving validity to their opinion. 

Yet amidst this nobility, distinguished by its warlike prowess, its 
great landed possessions and numerous slaves, various persons and 
classes found the means of attaining respect and station by means of 
intellectual influence, knowledge, and acquirements, viz., priests, who 
were honoured by the people as gods*; seers, who announced the 
destinies of nations and men, sometimes in accordance with superstitious 
notions, but not unfrequently with a deep foresight of an eternal and 
superintending Providence ; heralds, who by their manifold knowledge 
and readiness of address were the mediators in all intercourse between 
persons of different states ; artisans, who were invited from one country 
to another, so much were their rare qualifications in request t; and, 
lastly, minstrels, or bards ; who, although possessing less influence and 
authority than the priests, and placed on a level with the travelling 
artisans, still, as servants of the Muses j, dedicated to the pure and inno- 
cent worship of these deities, thought themselves entitled to a peculiar 
degree of estimation, as well as a friendly and considerate treatment. 
Thus Ulysses, at the massacre of the suitors, respects Phemius their 
bard§; and we find the same class enjoying a dignified position in 
royal families ; as, for instance, the faithful minstrel to whose protection 
Agamemnon entrusted his wife during his expedition against Troy ||. 

§ 2. Above all, we find the bards in the heroic age described by 
Homer as always holding an important post in every festal banquet ; as 
the Muses in the Olympian palace of Zeus himself, who sing to Apollo's 
accompaniment on the cithara; amongst the Phaeacians, Demodocus, 
who is represented as possessing a numerous choice of songs, both of a 
serious and lively cast ; Phemius, in the house of Ulysses, whom the 
twelve suitors of Penelope had brought with them from their palaces in 
Ithaca^. The song and dance are the chief ornaments of the banquet**, 
and by the men of that age were reckoned as the highest pleasure tt. 

This connexion of epic poetry with the banquets of princes had, per- 

* 6to$ S' us rkro ^'/if^oo. 

■}■ rts yuo V/i l-s/Vflv xa.'ku aXXofav a,vro$ S7tlX6uv 
aKXov y, i\ f^h ruv o'i ^'/ifttoipyoi 'ictaiv J 
fjccivTiv '/> t'/irriQtt x,ce.x.uv >j rixrova %ovquv, 
y\ x.a) iioniv aoibh, o xiv TioTT'/ifftv uillcuv ; 
eSroi yug xkr/roi yi $(>otu)> It' utu^ovcc yetiav. 

Odyssey, xvii. 383 ei seq. 

h Odyss. xxii. 344; see particularly viii. 479. || Odyss. hi. 267. 

«[ Od. xvi. 252. ** «v«^«t« Unit. ft Od. xvii. 518. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 31 

haps, been of considerable duration in Greece. Even the first sketch of 
the Iliad and Odyssey may have been intended to be sung; on these 
occasions, as Demodocus sang the celebrated poem on the contest 
between Achilles and Ulysses*, or the taking of Troy by means of the 
wooden horse f. It is clear also that the Homeric poems were intended 
for the especial gratification of princes, not of republican communities, 
for whom the adage " The government of many is not good ; let there 
be one lord, one king }," could not possibly have been composed : and 
although Homer flourished some centuries later than the heroic age, 
which appeared to him like some distant and marvellous world, from 
which the race of man had degenerated both in bodily strength and 
courage ; yet the constitutions of the different states had not undergone 
any essential alteration, and the royal families, which are celebrated in 
the Iliad and Odyssey, still ruled in Greece and the colonies of Asia 
Minor §. To these the minstrels naturally turned for the purpose of 
making them acquainted with the renown of their forefathers, and whilst 
the pride of these descendants of heroes was flattered, and the highest 
enjoyment secured to them, poetry became the instrument of the most 
various instruction, and was adapted exclusively for the nobles of that 
age ; so that Hesiod rightly esteems the power of deciding law-suits with 
justice, and influencing a popular assembly, as a gift of the Muses, and 
especially of Calliope, to kings ||. 

But even before Homer's time heroic poetry was not only employed 
to give an additional zest to the banquets of princes, but for other pur- 
poses to which, in the later republican age, it was almost exclusively 
applied, viz., the contests of poets at public festivals and games. A con- 
test of this nature is alluded to in the Homeric description of the Thracian 

* Od. viii. 74. f Od. viii. 500. J Iliad, ii. 204. 

§ The supposed descendants of Hercules ruled in Sparta, and for a long time also 
in Messenia and Argos (Midler's Dorians, book iii. chap. 6, §. 10) as Bacchiads in 
Corinth, as Aleuads in Thessaly. The Pelopids were kings of Achaia until Oxylus, 
probably for several centuries, and ruled as Penthilids in Lesbos as well as in Cyme. 
The Ne/ids governed Athens as archons for life until the seventh Olympiad, and the. 
cities of the lonians as kings for several generations (at Miletus, for example, the 
succession was Nileus, Phobius, Phrygius). Besides these the descendants of the 
Lycian hero Glaucus ruled in Ionia : Herod, i. 147 — a circumstance which doubtless 
influenced the poet in assigning so important a part to the Lycians in the Trojan 
war, and in celebrating Glaucus (Iliad, vi.). The JEacids ruled over the Molossians, 
the Mneads over the remnant of the Teucrians, which maintained itself at Gergis, in 
the range of Ida and in the neighbourhood. (Classical Journal, vol. xxvi. p. 308, seq.) 
In Arcadia kings of the race of JEpytus (Iliad, ii. 604) reigned till about Olympiad 30. 
Pausan. viii. 5. Boeotia was, in Hesiod's time, governed by kings with extensive 
powers ; and Amphidamas of Chalcis, at whose funeral games the Ascrsean bard was 
victorious ("Egya, v. 652) was probably a king in Euboea (see Proclus, Tivos 'Htno^ou, 
and the 'hyuv) ; although Plutarch (Conviv. sept. sap. c. 10) only calls him an 
aw,o ToXifnyJs . The Homeric epigram, 13, in the Life of Homer, c. 31, calls the 
yipugot fixiriXni; vipivot uv ayo^n, the ornament of the market-place ; the later recension 
of the same epigram in 'Htrio^ou xat 'O^n^ou uyuv mentions instead the kao; e/v uyoPv<ri 
xaHpivos, in a republican sense, the people having taken the place of kings. 

H Theogony, v. 84. 



32 HISTORY OF THE 

bard Thamyris, who, on his road from Eurytus, the powerful ruler of 
GEchalia, was struck blind at Dorium by the Muses, and deprived of his 
entire art, because he had boasted of his ability to contend even with the 
Muses*. The Boeotian minstrel of the " Works and Days " gives an 
account of his own voyage to the games at Chalcis, which the sons of 
Amphidamas had celebrated at the funeral of their father ; and says, 
that among the prizes which were there held out, he carried off a tripod, 
and consecrated it to the Muses on Mount Helicon f. Later authors 
converted this into a contest between Hesiod and Homer. Finally, the 
author of the Delian Hymn to Apollo, which stands the first amongst 
those attributed to Homer, entreats the Delian virgins (who were them- 
selves well versed in the song, and probably obeyed him with pleasure), 
that when a stranger should inquire what bard had pleased them most, 
they would answer the blind man of Chios, whose poetry every where 
held the first rank. It is beyond doubt that at the festivals, with which 
the Ionians celebrated the birth of Apollo at Delos, contests of rhapso- 
dists were also introduced, just as we find them spread throughout Greece, 
at a time when Grecian history assumes a more connected form J ; and, 
as may be inferred with respect to the earlier period, from numerous 
allusions in the Homeric hymns. 

§ 3. The mention of rhapsodists leads us to consider the circum- 
stance from whence that name is derived, and from which alone we can 
collect a clear and lively idea of epic poetry, viz., the manner in which 
these compositions were delivered. Homer everywhere applies the term 
aoihr] to the delivery of poems, whilst 'iirq merely denotes the every-day 
conversation of common life ; on the other hand, later authors, from 
Pindar downwards, use the term zirn frequently to designate poetry, and 
especially epic, in contradistinction to lyric. Indeed, in that primitive 
and simple age, a great deal passed under the name of 'AotcY/, or song, 
which in later times would not have been considered as such ; for in- 
stance, any high-pitched sonorous recitation, with certain simple modu- 
lations of the voice. 

The Homeric minstrel makes use of a stringed instrument, which is 

* Iliad, ii. 594, seq. f v. 654, seq., compare above note (*). 

I Contests of rhapsodists at Sicyon, in the time of the tyrant Clisthenes, Herod. 
V. 77 ; at the same time at the Panathencea, according to well known accounts ; in 
Syracuse, about Olymp. 69, Schol. Pind. Nem. ii. 1 ; at the Asclepira in Epidaurus, 
Plato, Ion, p. 530 ; in Attica also, at the festival of the Brauronian Artemis, Hesych. 
in Bguvguvioi; ; at the festival of the Charites in Orchomenos ; that of the Muses at 
Thespice, and that of Apollo Ptous at Acrcephia, Boeckh. Corp. Inscript. Gr., Nos. 
1583 — 15S7, vol. i. p. 762 — 770 ; in Chios, in later times, but doubtless from ancient 
custom, Corp. Inscript. Gr. No. 2214, vol. ii. p. 201; in Teos, under the name 
vnofioXKS ccvTccrodotrius, according to Boeckh. Prooem. Lect. Berol. aestiv. 1 834. Poems 
were likewise sometimes rhapsodised in O/ympia. Diog. Laert. viii. 6, 63 ; Diod. 
xiv. 109. Contests of rhapsodists also suited the festivals of Dionysus, Athenaeus, 
vii. p. 275 ; and those of all gods, which it is right to remark for the proper compre- 
hension of the Homeric hymns. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 33 

called a cithara, or, more precisely, phorminx*, an instrument by which 
dances were also accompanied. When the phorminx was used to lead 
a dancing-chorus, its music was of course continued as long as the 
dancing* lasted f ; whilst, at the recitation of epic poetry, it was only em- 
ployed in the introduction (d>/a/3oA//), and merely served to give the 
voice the necessary pitch 4. A simple accompaniment of this description 
is very well adapted to the delivery of epic poetry ; and in the present 
day the heroic lays of the Servians, which have most faithfully retained 
their original character, are delivered in an elevated tone of voice by 
wandering minstrels, after a few introductory notes, for which the gurla, 
a stringed instrument of the simplest construction, is employed. That 
a musical instrument of this nature was not necessary for the recital 
of epic poetry is proved by the fact, that Hesiod did not make use of 
the cithara, and on that account is said to have been excluded from the 
musical contests at Delphi, where this instrument was held in the highest 
estimation, as the favourite of Apollo himself. On the other hand, the 
poets of this Boeotian school merely carried a laurel staff§, as a token 
of the dignity bestowed by Apollo and the Muses, as the sceptre was 
the badge of judges and heralds. 

In later times, as music was more highly cultivated, the delivery of the 
two species of poetry became more clearly denned. The rhapsodists, 
or chaunters of epic poetry, are clearly distinguished from the citharodi, 
or singers to the cithara ||. The expression pa\p<ohos, paxpwdeiv, signifies 
nothing more than the peculiar method of epic recitation ; and it is an 
error which has been the occasion of much perplexity in researches re- 
specting Homer, and which has moreover found its way into ordinary 
language, to endeavour to found upon this word conclusions with respect 
to the composition and connexion of the epic lays, and to infer 
from it that they consisted of scattered fragments subsequently joined to- 

* That the phorminx and cithara were nearly the same instrument appears not 
only from the expression tpbyuyyi xrfugl&iv, which often occurs, hut from the con- 
verse expression, xMpu p^i^uv, which is used in the Odyssey: — 
x'/i^v't V Iv %i(>fftv y -''@ a £' v vtgutcl\'/.ioi Ovwiv 
^fry/tied, 0$ p 'Alibi <xa.^k f&vi]ffT)igertv uvuyz'/i. 
foot <pogf&i£cuv uvifiuXXiro KttXh uiifoiv. — Od. i. 153—5. 
f See, for example, Od. iv. 17: — 

fziru Vi ff(piv iuiXwiro 6i7o; uoi$os 
<po^[At^uv' ^oiu Vi nvfiitTT'/iryioi x.ut avrov; 
(/.oXtm i^dp^ovrts Wivtvov kcctx fiitftrov;. 
I Hence the expression, p^i^av unfiuXXir iuihiv, Od. i. 155 ; viii. 266 ; xvii. 262 ; 
Hymn to Hermes, v. 426. 

ro&Xa $e Xiyiu; K,i0ug!£uv i 

TygusT Kft[Zo\a,%nV) Ipwrh Vz ei 'itrmro (ptuv/i. 
On ctpfZoXu, in the sense of prelude, see Pindar, Pyth. i. 7 ; compare Aristoph. Pac. 
830 ; Theocrit. vi. 20. I pass over the testimonies of the grammarians. 

§ polios, u1<rctKos, also called ffwvrgov. See Hesiod, Theogon. 30 ; Pindar, Isthm 
iii. 55 ;• where, according to Dissen, puf&os, as the symbolical sign of the poetical 
office, is also ascribed to Homer, Pausan. ix. 30 ; x. 7 ; Gottling ad Hesiod, p. 13. 

|| See, for example, Plato, Leg, ii. p. 658, and the inscriptions quoted above, p. 32, 
note J. 



34 HISTORY OF THE 

gether. The term rhapsodising applies equally well to the bard who 
recites his own poem (as to Homer, as the poet of the Iliad and 
Odyssey *), and to the declaimer who recites anew the song that has 
been heard a thousand times before. Every poem can be rhapsodised 
which is composed in an epic tone, and in which the verses are of equal 
length, without being distributed into corresponding parts of a larger 
whole, strophes, or similar systems. Thus we find this term applied to 
philosophical songs of purification by Empedocles (ra0ap/ioc)» and to 
iambics by Archilochus and Simonides, which were strung together in 
the manner of hexameters t; it was, indeed, only lyric poetry, like 
Pindar's odes, which could not be rhapsodised. Rhapsodists were also 
not improperly called arixytiol J, because all the poems which they re- 
cited were composed in single lines independent of each other (tr-t^oi). 
This also is evidently the meaning of the name rhapsodist, which, ac- 
cording to the laws of the language, as well as the best authorities §, 
ought to be derived from pd7rfeiv aoilr\v, and denotes the coupling to- 
gether of verses without any considerable divisions or pauses — in other 
words, the even, unbroken, and continuous flow of the epic poem. As 
the ancients in general show great steadiness and consistency, both in 
art and literature, and adhered, without any feeling of satiety or craving 
after novelty, to those models and styles of composition, which had been 
once recognised as the most perfect ; so epic poems, amongst the Greeks, 
continued to be rhapsodised for upwards of a thousand years. It is 
true, indeed, that at a later period the Homeric poems, like those of 
Hesiod, were connected with a musical accompaniment ||, and it is said 
that even Terpander the Lesbian adapted the hexameters of Homer, as 
well as his own, to tunes made according to certain fixed nomes or styles 
of music, and to have thus sung them at the contests %, and that Ste- 
sander the Samian appeared at the Pythian games as the first who sung 
the Homeric poems to the cithara**. This assimilation between the 
delivery of epic and lyric poetry was however very far from being gene- 
rally adopted throughout Greece, as the epic recitation or rhapsodia is 
always clearly distinguished from the poems sung to the cithara at the 
musical contests ; and how great an effect an exhibition of this kind, 

* Homer, pu-^uhT -rt^uav, the Iliad and Odyssey, according to Plato, Rep. x. 
p. GOO D. Concerning Hesiod as a rhapsodist, Nicocles ap. Schol. Pindar., Nem. ii. ] . 

t See Athenaeus, xiv. p. 620 C. Compare Plato, Ion. p. 531. 

j Menaechmus in Schol. Pind., Nem. ii. ]. 

§ The Homerids are called by Pindar, Nem. ii. 2, pavruv Inicov ueiht, that is, car- 
minum perpetua oratione recitatorum, Dissen. ed. min. p. 371. In the scholia to this 
passage a verse is cited under the name of Hesiod, in which he ascribes the /acr- 
tuv aoilhv to himself and Homer, and, moreover, in reference to a hymn, not an 
epic poem consisting of several parts. 

|| Athenaeus, xiv. p. 620 B, after Chamseleon. But the argument of Athenaeus, 
ib. p. 632 D. " Of&wgov /u,ifjt,z?*o9roi'/ix,i)>oct tkfckv exurod <r»jv <xo'tr><nv rests on erroneous 
hypotheses. 

«j[ Plutarch de Musica, 3. ** Athen. xiv. p. 638 A. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 35 

delivered in a dress of solemn ceremony*, with suitable tones and expres- 
sion f, produced upon the listeners, and how much it excited their sym- 
pathy, is most plainly described by Ion, the Ephesian rhapsodist, whom 
Plato, in one of his lesser Dialogues, has brought forward as a butt for 
the irony of Socrates. 

§ 4. The form which epic poetry preserved for more than a thousand 
years among the Greeks agrees remarkably well with this composed and 
even style of chaunting recitation which we have just described. In- 
deed, the ancient minstrels of the Homeric and ante-Homeric age had 
probably no choice, since for a long period the hexameter verse was the 
only regular and cultivated form of poetry, and even in the time of Ter- 
pander (about Olymp. 30) was still almost exclusively used for lyric 
poetry ; although we are not on that account to suppose, that all popular 
songs, hymeneals, dirges, and ditties (such as those which Homer repre- 
sents Calypso and Circe as singing at the loom), were composed in 
the same rhythm. But the circumstance of the dactylic verse, the hexa- 
meter, having^been the first and, for a long time,] the'only metre which 
was regularly cultivated in Greece, is an important evidence with respect 
to the tone and character of the ancient Grecian poetry, the Ho- 
meric and ante- Homeric epic. The character of the different rhythms, 
which, among the Greeks, was always in exact accordance with that of 
the poetry, consists in the first place in the relation of the arsis and 
thesis, of the strong or weak cadence — in other words, of the greater or 
less exertion of the voice. Now in the dactyl these two elements are 
evenly balanced J, which therefore belongs to the equal class of equal 
rhythms § ; and hence a regular equipoise, with its natural accompani- 
ment, an even and steady tone, is the character of the dactylic measure. 
This tone is constantly preserved in the epic hexameter ; but there were 
other dactylic metres, which, by the shortening of the long element, or 
the arsis, acquired a different character, which will be more closely 
examined when we come to treat of the iEolian lyric poetry. Accord- 
ing to Aristotle ||, the epic verse was the most dignified and composed 
of all measures ; its entire form and composition appears indeed pecu- 
liarly fitted to produce this effect. The length of the verse, which con- 
sists of six feet %, the break which is obtained by a pause at the end **, 
the close connexion of the parts into an entire whole, which results 

* Plato, Ion. p. 530. The sumptuous dress of the rhapsodist Magnes of Smyrna, 
in the time of Gyges, is described by Nicolaus Damasc. Fr'agm. p. 268, ed. Tauch- 
nitz. In later times, when the Homeric poetry was delivered in a more dramatic 
style (i/tfsxgi'v&To fyaf&arixungoi), the Iliad was sung by the rhapsodists in a^ red, the 
Odyssey in a violet, dress, Eustath. ad Iliad, A. p. 6, 9, ed. Rom. 

f Plato, Ion. p. 535. From this, in later days, a regular dramatic style of acting 
{vtox^ktis) for the rhapsodists or Homerists was developed. See Aristot. Poet. 26 ; 
Rhetor, iii. 1, 8; Achill. Tat. ii. 1. 

I For in Ivu, I is equal to two times, as well as vu. § yUot "<rav. 

I I Poet. 24, to h^uixh ffTowifAuroirov xa) hyxuViorrarov tuv ftireuv Itrrtv, 

% Hence versus longi among the Romans. ** xaraAjjg/;. 

d2 



30 HISTORY OF THE 

from the dovetailing of the feet into one another, the alternation of dac- 
tyls with the heavy spondees, all contribute to give repose and majesty 
and a lofty solemn tone to the metre, and render it equally adapted to 
the pythoness who announces the decrees of the deity*, and to the rhap- 
sodist who recites the battles and adventures of heroes. 

Not only the metre, but the poetical tone and style of the ancient 
epic, was fixed and settled in a manner which occurs in no other kind of 
poetry in Greece. This uniformity in style is the first thing that strikes us 
in comparing the Homeric poems with other remains of the more ancient 
epic poetry — the differences between them being apparent only to the 
careful and critical observer. It is scarcely possible to account satisfac- 
torily for this uniformity — this invariableness of character — except upon 
the supposition of a certain tradition handed down from generation to 
generation in families of minstrels, of an hereditary poetical school. We 
recognise in the Homeric poems many traces of a style of poetry which, 
sprung originally from the muse-inspired enthusiasm of the Pierians of 
Olympus or Helicon, was received and improved by the bards of the 
heroic ages, and some centuries later arrived at the matured excellence 
which is still the object of our admiration, though without losing all 
connexion with its first source. We shall not indeed undertake to 
defend the genealogies constructed by Pherecydes, Damastes, and other 
collectors of legends from all the various names of primitive poets and 
minstrels extant in their time — genealogies, in which Homer and 
Hesiod are derived from Orpheus, Musams, and other Pierian bards f ; 
but the fundamental notion of these derivations, viz., the connexion of 
the epic poets with the early minstrels, receives much confirmation from 
the form of the epic poetry itself. 

In no other species of poetry besides the epic do we find generally 
prevalent certain traditional forms, and an invariable type, to which 
every poet, however original and inventive his genius, submits ; and it 
is evident that the getting by heart of these poems, as well as their extem- 
poraneous effusion on particular occasions and at the inspiration of the 
moment, must have been by these means greatly facilitated. To the 
same cause, or to the style which had been consecrated by its origin and 
tradition, we attribute the numerous and fixed epithets of the gods and 
heroes which are added to their names without any reference to their 
actions or the circumstances of the persons who may be described. The 
great attention paid to external dignity in the appellations which the 
heroes bestow on each other, and which, from the elevation of their 
tone, are in strange contrast with the reproaches with which they at the 
same time load each other — the frequently-recurring expressions, par- 
ticularly in the description of the ordinary events of heroic life, their 

* Hence called Pythium metrum, and stated to be an invention of the priestess 
Phemonoe, Dorians, ii. ch. 8, § 13. 

f These genealogies have been most accurately compared and examined with cri- 
tical acuteness by Lobeck, in his learned work, Aglaophamus, vol. i. p. 322, seg. 



LITERATURE OF AXCIENT GREECE. 37 

assemblies, sacrifices, banquets, &c. — the proverbial expressions and 
sentences derived from an earlier age, to which class may be referred 
most of the verses which belong in common to Homer and Hesiod — and, 
finally, the uniform construction of the sentences, and their connexion 
with each other, are also attributable to the same origin. 

This, too, is another proof of the happy tact and natural genius of the 
Greeks of that period ; since no style can be conceived which would be 
better suited than this to epic narrative and description. In general, 
short phrases, consisting of two or three hexameters, and usually termi- 
nating with the end of a verse ; periods of greater length, occurring 
chiefly in impassioned speeches and elaborate similes ; the phrases care- 
fully joined and strung together with conjunctions ; the collocation 
simple and uniform, without any of the words being torn from their 
connexion, and placed in a prominent position by a rhetorical artifice ; 
all this appears the natural language of a mind which contemplates the 
actions of heroic life with an energetic but tranquil feeling, and passes 
them successively in review with conscious delight and complacency. 

§ 5. The tone and style of epic poetry is also evidently connected 
with the manner in which these poems were perpetuated. After the 
researches of various scholars, especially of Wood and Wolf, no one can 
doubt that it was universally preserved by the memory alone, and handed 
down from one rhapsodist to another by oral tradition. The Greeks 
(who, in poetry, laid an astonishing stress on the manner of delivery, 
the observance of the rhythm, and the proper intonation and inflection 
of the voice) always, even in later times, considered it necessary that per- 
sons, who were publicly to deliver poetical compositions, should previ- 
ously practise and rehearse their part. The oral instruction of the chorus 
was the chief employment of the lyric and tragic poets, who were hence 
called chorodidascali. Amongst the rhapsodists also, to whom the cor- 
rectness and grace of delivery was of much importance, this method of 
tradition was the most natural, and at the same time the only one pos- 
sible, at a time in which the art of writing was either not known at all 
to the Greeks or used only by a few, and by them to a very slight extent. 
The correctness of this supposition is proved, in the first place, by the 
silence of Homer, which has great weight in matters which he had so 
frequently occasion to describe; but particularly by the "fatal tokens" 
(W/juarct Xvypa), commanding the destruction of Bellerophon, which 
Proetus sends to Iobates : these being clearly a species of symbolical 
figures, which must have speedily disappeared from use when alpha- 
betical writing was once generally introduced. 

Besides this we have no credible account of written memorials of that 
period ; and it is distinctly stated that the laws of Zaleucus (about Olymp. 
30) were the first committed to writing : those of Lycurgus, of earlier 
date, having been at first preserved only by oral tradition. Additional 
confirmation is afforded by the rarity and worthlessness of any historical 



38 HISTORY OF THE 

data founded upon written documents, of the period before the com- 
mencement of the Olympiads. The same circumstance also explains 
the late introduction of prose composition among the Greeks, viz., during 
the time of the seven wise men. The frequent employment of writing 
for detailed records would of itself have introduced the use of prose. 
Another proof is afforded by the existing inscriptions, very few of which 
are of earlier date than the time of Solon ; also by the coins which were 
struck in Greece from the reign of Phidon, king of Argos (about 
Olymp. 8), and which continued for some time without any inscription, 
and only gradually obtained a few letters. Again, the very shape of the 
letters may be adduced in evidence, as in all monuments until about 
the time of the Persian war, they exhibit a great uncouthness in their 
form, and a great variety of character in different districts ; so much so, 
that we can almost trace their gradual development from the Phoenician 
character (which the Greeks adopted as the foundation of their alphabet) 
until they obtained at last a true Hellenic stamp. Even in the time of 
Herodotus, the term " Phoenician characters" * was still used for writing. 
If now we return to Homer, it will be found that the form of the text 
itself, particularly as it appears in the citations of ancient authors, dis- 
proves the idea of its having been originally committed to writing, since 
we find a great variety of different readings and discrepancies, which 
are much more reconcilable with oral than written tradition. Finally, 
the language of the Homeric poems (as it still appears after the nume- 
rous revisions of the text), if considered closely and without prejudice, is 
of itself a proof that they were not committed to writing till many cen- 
turies after their composition. We allude more particularly to the omis- 
sion of the van, or (as it is termed) the iEolic digamma, a sound which 
was pronounced even by Homer strongly or faintly according to cir- 
cumstances, but was never admitted by the Ionians into written com- 
position, they having entirely got rid of this sound before the introduc- 
tion of writing : and hence it was not received in the most ancient copies 
of Homer, which were, without doubt, made by the Ionians. The 
licence as to the use of the digamma is, however, only one instance of the 
freedom which so strongly characterizes the language of Homer ; but it 
could never have attained that softness and flexibility which render it so 
well adapted for versification — that variety of longer and shorter forms 
which existed together — that freedom in contracting and resolving vowels, 
and of forming the contractions into two syllables — if the practice of 
writing had at that time exercised the power, which it necessarily pos- 
sesses, of fixing the forms of a language. Lastly, to return to the point, 
for the sake of which we have entered into this explanation, the 
poetical style of the ancient epic poems shows the great use it made of 
those aids of which poetry, preserved and transmitted by means of 

* Qotvixvia in Herod, v. 58. Likewise in the inscription known by the name ot 
Dirae Tt'wrum. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 39 

memory alone, will always gladly avail itself. The Greek epic, like 
heroic poems of other nations which were preserved by oral tradition, 
as well as our own popular songs, furnishes us with many instances, 
where, by the mere repetition of former passages or a few customary 
flowing phrases, the mind is allowed an interval of repose, which it 
gladly makes use of in order to recal the verses which immediately follow. 
These epic expletives have the same convenience as the constantly- 
recurring burdens of the stanzas in the popular poetry of other nations, 
and contribute essentially towards rendering comprehensible the marvel 
(which, however, could only be accounted as such in times when the 
powers of memory have been' weakened by the use of writing) involved 
in the composition and preservation of such poems by the means of 
memory alone*. 

§ 6. In this chapter our inquiries have hitherto been directed to the 
delivery, form, and character of the ancient epic, as we must suppose it 
to have existed before the age of Homer. With regard, however, to any 
particular production of this ante- Homeric poetry, no historical testimony 
of any is extant, much less any fragment or account of the subject of the 
poem. And yet it is in general quite certain that at the period when 
Homer and Hesiod arose, a large number of songs must have existed 
respecting the actions both of gods and heroes. The compositions of 
these poets, if taken by themselves, do not bear the character of a com- 
plete and all-sufficient body, but rest on a broad foundation of other 
poems, by means of which their entire a scope and application was deve- 
loped to a contemporary audience. In the Theogony, Hesiod only aims 
at bringing the families of gods and heroes into an unbroken genealo- 
gical connexion ; the gods and heroes themselves he always supposes 
to be well known. Homer speaks of Achilles, Nestor, Diomed, even 
the first time their names are introduced, as persons with whose race, 
family, preceding history, and actions, every person was acquainted, and 
which require to be only occasionally touched upon so far as may be 
connected with the actual subject. Besides this, we find a crowd of 
secondary personages, who, as if well known from particular traditions, 
are very slightly alluded to ; persons whose existence was doubtless a 
matter of notoriety to the poet, and who were interesting from a variety 
of circumstances, but who are altogether unknown to us, as they were to 
the Greeks of later days. That the Olympian council of the gods, as 
represented in Homer, must have been previously arranged by earlier 
poets, has been already remarked ; and poetry of a similar nature to one 
part of Hesiod's Theogony, though in some respects essentially different, 

* The author has here given a summary of all the arguments which contradict 
the opinion that the ancient epics of the Greeks were originally reduced to writing ; 
principally because, in the course of the critical examination to which Wolf's in- 
quiries have been recently submitted in Germany, this point has been differently 
handled by several persons, and it has been again maintained that these poems were 
preserved in writing from the beginning. 



40 HISTORY OP THE 

must have been composed upon Cronus and Japetus, the expelled deities 
languishing in Tartarus*. 

In the heroic age, however, every thing great and distinguished must 
have been celebrated in song, since, according to Homer's notions, glo- 
rious actions or destinies naturally became the subjects of poetry f. 
Penelope by her virtues, and Clytaemnestra by her crimes, became respec- 
tively a tender and a dismal strain for posterity J; the enduring opinion 
of mankind being identical with the poetry. The existence of epic 
poems descriptive of the deeds of Hercules, is in particular established 
by the peculiarity of the circumstances mentioned in Homer with 
respect to this hero, which seem to have been taken singly from some 
full and detailed account of his adventures §; nor would the ship Argo 
have been distinguished in the Odyssey by the epithet of " interesting 
to all," had it not been generally well known through the medium of 
poetry ||. Many events, moreover, of the Trojan war were known to 
Homer as the subjects of epic poems, especially those which occurred at 
a late period of the siege, as the contest between Achilles and Ulysses, 
evidently a real poem, which was not perhaps without influence upon 
the Iliad ^[, and the poem of the Wooden Horse **. Poems are also men- 
tioned concerning the return of the Achaeans ft, and the revenge of 
Orestes J J. And since the newest song, even at that time, always pleased 
the audience most §§, we must picture to ourselves a flowing stream of 
various strains, and a revival of the olden time in song, such as never 
occurred at any other period. All the Homeric allusions, however, leave 
the impression that these songs, originally intended to enliven a few 
hours of a prince's banquet, were confined to the narration of a single 
event of small compass, or (to borrow an expression from the German 
epopees) to a single adventure, for the connexion of which they 
entirely relied upon the general notoriety of the story and on other 
existing poems. 

Such was the state of poetry in Greece when the genius of Homer 
arose. 

* That is to say, it does not, from the intimations given in Homer, seem prohable 
that he reckoned the deities of the water, as Oceanus and Tethys, and those of the 
light, as Hyperion and Theia, among the Titans, as Hesiod does. 

f See Iliad, vi.358; Od. iii. 204. J Od. xxiv. 197, 200. 

§ See Midler's Dorians, Append, v. § 14, vol. i. p. 543. 

|| Od. xii. 70 : ' A^yu greuriplkoviret. 

^| The words are very remarkable : — 

Mevir a.o' aoi^ov uv/ixtv azidifiiveti Kk'-ct avoouv, 

atfMfc, T*K r' or r «f a *Xso; oloavcv tv^vv ixanv, 

iukoc y Ql>v<r<rm$ xa) DrtXi'tbiw 'A^iXr.o;. — Od. viii. 73, seq. 

** Od. viii. 492. ff Od. i. 326. + + Od. hi. 204. §§ Od. i. 351. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 41 



CHAPTER V. 



§ 1. Opinions on the birthplace and country of Homer. — § 2. Homer probably a 
Smynia s an: early history of Smyrna. — § 3. Union ofyEolian and Ionian cha- 
racteristics in Homer. — § 4. Novelty of Homer's choice of subjects for his two 
poems. — § 5. Subject of the Iliad : the anger of Achilles. — § 6. Enlargement of 
the subject by introducing the events of the entire war. — § 7. and by dwelling on 
the exploits of the Grecian heroes. — § 8. Change of tone in the Iliad in its pro- 
gress. — 5 9. The Catalogue of Ships. — 10. The later books, and the conclusion of 
the Iliad. — § 11. Subject of the Odyssey: the return of Ulysses. — § 12. Inter- 
polations in the Odyssey. — § 13. The Odyssey posterior to the Iliad; but both 
poems composed by the same person. — § 14. Preservation of the Homeric poems 
by rhapsodists, and manner of their recitation. 

§ 1. The only accounts which have been preserved respecting the life of 
Homer are a few popular traditions, together with conjectures of the 
grammarians founded on inferences from different passages of his poems ; 
yet even these, if examined with patience and candour, furnish some mate- 
rials for arriving at probable results. With regard to the native country of 
Homer, the traditions do not differ so much as might at first sight appear 
to be the case. Although seven cities contended for the honour of havins: 
given birth to the great poet, the claims of many of them were only 
indirect. Thus the Athenians only laid claim to Homer, as having 
been the founders of Smyrna*, and the opinion of Aristarchus, the 
Alexandrine critic, which admitted their claim, was probably qualified 
with the same explanation f. Even Chios cannot establish its right to 
be considered as the original source of the Homeric poetry, although the 
claims of this Ionic island are supported by the high authority of the 
lyric poet Simonides }. It is true that in Chios lived the race of the 
Homerids § ; who, from the analogy of other yevq, are to be considered 
not as a family, but as a society of persons, who followed the same art, 
and therefore worshipped the same gods, and placed at their head a 

* This is clearly expressed in the epigram on Pisi stratus, in Bekker's Anecdota, 
vol. ii. p. 768. 

to!? (ai rvoavvrHruvra. TOTu.vra.Kii i^ihiu%iv 

^Tifjco? ' Afava/cov, xoc) to)? WnyayiTo, 
tov f^'tyctv iv QouXy Uit<ritrrpxrov, eg tov "Ouvoov 

nQomo-u., ffvropadnv to toiv auYofttvov. 
v/u.it;oo; yccQ xuvo? 6 y^ovtrio? riv ToXiyjT'/j?, 
i'Iti(> 'AO'/ivkioi Ipvovuv afUKiff-Xfttv, 
f The opinion of Aristarchus is briefly stated by Pseudo-Plutarch Vita Homeri, 
ii. :i. lis foundation may be seen by comparing, for example, the Schol. Venet. on Iliad, 
xiii. 1D7, e cod. A, which, according 10 recent investigations, contain extracts from 
Aristarchus. 

I Simonides in Pseudo-Plutarch, ii. 2, and others. Compare Theocritus, vii. 17. 
§ Concerning this yivo?, see the statements in Harpocration in 'Opyiofiai, and Bek- 
ker's Anecdota, p. 288, which in part are derived from the logographers. Another 
and different use of the word ' Opnefieti occurs in Plato, Isocrates, and other writers, 
according to which it means the admirers of Homer. 



42 HISTORY OF THE 

hero, from whom they derived their name*. A member of this house 
of Homerids was, probably, " the blind poet," who, in the Homeric 
hymn to Apollo, relates of himself, that he dwelt on the rocky Chios, 
whence he crossed to Delos for the festival of the Ionians and the con- 
tests of the poets, and whom Thucydides f took for Homer himself; a 
supposition, which at least shows that this great historian considered 
Chios as the dwelling-place of Homer. A later Homerid of Chios was 
the well-known Cinaethus, who, as we know from his victory at Syracuse, 
flourished about the 69th Olympiad. At what time the Homerid Par- 
thenius of Chios lived is unknown \. But notwithstanding the ascer- 
tained existence of this clan of Homerids at Chios, nay, if we even, with 
Thucydides, take the blind man of the hymn for Homer himself, it 
would not follow that Chios was the birthplace of Homer : indeed, the 
ancient writers have reconciled these accounts by representing Homer 
as having, in his wanderings, touched at Chios, and afterwards fixed his 
residence there. A notion of this kind is evidently implied in Pindar's 
statements, who in one place called Homer a Smyrnsean by origin, in 
another, a Chian and Smyrnaean §. The same idea is also indicated in 
the passage of an orator, incidentally cited by Aristotle ; which says that 
" the Chians greatly honoured Homer, although he was not a citizen ||." 
With the Chian race of Homerids may be aptly compared the Samian 
family ; although this is not joined immediately to the name of Homer, 
but to that of Creophylus, who is described as the contemporary and 
host of Homer. This house also flourished for several centuries ; since, in 
the first place, a descendant of Creophylus is said to have given the 
Homeric poems to Lycurgus the Spartan % (which statement may be so 
far true, that the Lacedaemonians derived their knowledge of these poems 
from rhapsodists of the race of Creophylus) ; and, secondly, a later 
Creophylid, named Hermodamas, is said to have been heard by Py- 
thagoras**. 

§ 2. On the other hand, the opinion that Homer was a Smyrnasan not 
only appears to have been the prevalent belief in the flourishing times of 
Greece tt> but is supported by the two following considerations : — first, 
the important fact, that it appears in the form of a popular legend, a 
mythus, the divine poet being called a son of a nymph, Critheis, and the 

* Niebuhr, Hist, of Rome, vol. i. note 747 (801). Compare the Preface to 
Muller's Dorians, p. xii. seq. English Translation. 

]- Thucyd. iii. 104. 

* Suidas in Ua.t&Uw. It may be conjectured tbat this vios Q'httopo;, a-xoyovo; 
'Opipo-j, is connected with the ancient epic poet, Thestorides of Phocaea and Chios, 
mentioned in Pseudo-Herodot. Vit. Horn. 

§ See Boeckh. Pindar. Fragm. inc. 86. 

|| Aristot. Rhet. ii. 23. Cornp. Pseudo-Herod. Vit. Horn., near the end. 
*[ See particularly Heraclid. Pont. vroXiruuv, Fragm. 2. 
** Suidas in Uv^ayooet; ~S.dy,io;. p. 231, ed. Kuster. 

\t Besides the testimony of Pindar, the incidental statement of Scylaxis the most 
remarkable. 2/*y'^a h V'0^r t oo', fa, p. 35, ed. Is. Voss. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 43 

Smymaean river Meles*; secondly, that by assuming Smyrna as the 
central point of Homer's life and celebrity, the claims of all the other 
cities which rest on good authority (as of the Athenians, already men- 
tioned, of the Cumaeans, attested by Ephorus, himself a Cumaean f, of 
the Colophonians, supported by Antimachus of Colophon }), may be ex- 
plained and reconciled in a simple and natural manner. With this view, 
the history of Smyrna is of great importance in connexion with Homer, 
but from the conflicting interests of different tribes and the partial 
accounts of native authorities, is doubtful and obscure : the following 
account is, at least, the result of careful investigation. There were two 
traditions and opinions with respect to the foundation or first occupa- 
tion of Smyrna by a Greek people : the one was the Ionic ; according 
to which it was founded from Ephesus, or from an Ephesian village 
called Smyrna, which really existed under that name § ; this colony was 
also called an Athenian one, the lonians having settled Ephesus under 
the command of Androclus, the son of CodrusU. According to the 
other, the JEolian account, the iEolians of Cyme, eighteen years after 
their own city was founded, took possession of Smyrna •[[, and, in con- 
nexion with this event, accounts of the leaders of the colony are given, 
which agree well with other mythical statements**. As the Ionic 
settlement was fixed by the Alexandrine chronologists at the year 140 
after the destruction of Troy, and the foundation of Cyme is placed at 
the year 150 after the same epoch (which is in perfect harmony with 
the succession of the iEolic colonies), the two races met at about the 
same time in Smyrna, although, perhaps, it may be allowed that the 
lonians had somewhat the precedence in point of time, as the name of 
the town was derived from them. It is credible, although it is not 
distinctly stated, that for a long time the two populations occupied 
Smyrna jointly. The ^Eolians, however, appear to have predominated, 
Smyrna, according to Herodotus, being one of the twelve cities of the 

* Mentioned in all the different lives of Homer. The name or epithet of Homer, 
Melesigenes, can hardly be of late date, but must have descended from the early epic 
poets. 

f See Pseudo-Plutarch, ii. 2. Ephorus was likewise, evidently, the chief autho- 
rity followed by the author of the life of Homer, which goes by the name of Hero- 
dotus. 

% Pseudo-Plutarch, ii. 2. The connexion between the Smymaean and Colophonian 
origin of Homer is intimated in the epigram, ibid. i. 4, which calls Homer the son 
of Meles, and at the same time makes Colophon his native countty. 
'Tt\ MiXwro;, "Of/.'/i(>i } cv <ya,(> tcXio? 'EXkd^t Tuffy 
Kai Kokotpuvs 7ru.r(>n dnnKi iv u'iotov. 

§ See Strabo's detailed explanation, xiv. p. 633 — 4. 

|| Strabo, xiv. p. G32 — 3. Doubtless, likewise the Smymaean worship of Nemesis 
was derived from Rhamnus in Attica. The rhetorician Aristides gives many fabu- 
lous accounts of the Athenian colony at Smyrna in several places. 

«f[ Pseudo-IIerodot. Vit. Horn. c. 2, 38. 

** The oix.tfft'ni was, according to Pseudo-Herod, c. 2, a certain Theseus, the de- 
scendant of Eumelus of Pherse ; according* to Parthonius, 5, the same family of 
Admetus the Pheraean founded Magnesia on the Mseander; and Cyme, the indther- 
city of Smyrna, had also received inhabitants from Magnesia. Pseudo-Herod, c. 2. 



1 I HISTORY OF THE 

JEotians, while the Ionic league includes twelve cities, exclusive of 
Smyrna*; for the same reason Herodotus is entirely ignorant of the 
Ephesian settlement in Smyrna. Hence it came to pass, that the 
lonians — we know not exactly at what time — were expelled by the 
jEolians ; upon which they withdrew to Colophon, and were mixed with 
the other Colophonians, always, however, retaining the wish of reco- 
vering* Smyrna to the Ionic race. In later times the Colophonians, in 
fact, succeeded in conquering Smyrna, and in expelling- the iEolians 
from it-f; from which time Smyrna remained a purely Ionian city. 
Concerning- the time when this change took place, no express testimony 
has been preserved ; all that we know for certain is, that it happened 
before the time of Gyges, king of Lydia, that is, before about the 20th 
Olympiad, or 700 B. C, since Gyges made war on Smyrna, together 
with Miletus and Colophon J, which proves the connexion of these 
cities. We also know of an Olympic Tictor, in Olymp. 23 (688 B. C), 
who was an Ionian of Smyrna §. Mimnermus, the elegiac poet, who 
flourished about Olymp. 37 (630 B. C), was descended from these 
Colophonians who had settled at Smyrna ||. 

It cannot be doubted that the meeting of these different tribes in this 
corner of the coast of Asia Minor contributed by the various elements 
which it put in motion to produce the active and stirring spirit which 
would give birth to such works as the Homeric poems. On the one side 
there were the lonians from Athens, with their notions of their noble- 
minded, wise, and prudent goddess Athena, and of their brave and philan- 
thropic heroes, among whom Nestor, as the ancestor of the Ephesian 
and Milesian kings, is also to be reckoned. On the other side were the 
Achceans, the chief race among the iEolians of Cyme, with the princes 
of Agamemnon's family at their head*fl, with all the claims which were 
bound up with the name of the king of men, and a large body of 
legends which referred to the exploits of the Pelopids, particularly the 
taking of Troy. United with them were various warlike bands from 
Locris, Thessaly, and Eubcea ; but, especially colonists from Bceotia, with 
their Heliconian worship of the Muses and their hereditary love for 
poetry**. 

§ 3. If this conflux and intermixture of different races contributed pow- 

The Homeric epigram 4, in Pseudo Herod, c. 14, mentions Xuo) Wikuvos as the 
founders of Smyrna; thereby meaning the Locrian tribe, which, deriving its origin 
from Phricion, near Thermopylae, founded Cyme Phriconis, and also Larissa Phri- 
conis. 

* i.. 149. f Herod, i. 150. comp. i. 16. Pausan. vii. 5, 1. 

I Herod, i. 14; Pansanias, iv. 21, 3, also states distinctly that the Smyrnaeans 
were at that time lonians. Nor would Mimnermus have sung the exploits of the 
Smyrnaeans in this war if they had not been lonians. 

§ Pausan. v. 8, 3. || Mimnermus in Strabo, xiv. p. 634. 

«[[ Strabo, xiii. p. 582. An Agamemnon, king of Cyme, is mentioned by Pollux, 
ix. 83. 

** On the connexion of Cyme with Boeotia, see below, ch. 8. § 1. 



LITERATURE OV ANCIENT GREECE. 45 

erfully to stimulate the mental energies of the people, and to develop the 
traditionary accounts of former times, as well as to create and modify 
the epic dialect ; yet it would be satisfactory if we could advance a step 
further, and determine to which race Homer himself belonged. There 
does not appear to be sufficient reason, either in the name or the accounts 
of Homer, to dissolve him into a mere fabulous and ideal being : we see 
Hesiod, with all his minutest family relations, standing before our eyes ; 
and if Homer was by an admiring posterity represented as the son of 
a nymph, on the other hand, Hesiod relates how he was visited by the 
Muses. Now, the tradition which called Homer a Smyrncean, evidently 
(against the opinion of Antimachus) placed him in the iEolic time ; and 
the Homeric epigram*, in which Smyrna is called the iEolian, although 
considerably later than Homer himself, in whose mouth it is placed, is 
yet of much importance, as being the testimony of a Homerid who lived 
before the conquest of Smyrna by the Colophonians. Another argu- 
ment to the same effect is, that Melanopus, an ancient Cymaean com- 
poser of hymns, who, among the early bards, has the best claim to his- 
torical reality, the supposed author of a hymn referring to the Delian 
worship f) in various genealogies collected by the logographers and other 
mythologists is called the grandfather of Homer | ; whence it appears, 
that when these genealogies were fabricated, the Smyrnaean poet was 
connected with the Cymaean colony. The critics of antiquity have 
also remarked some traits of manners and usages described in Homer, 
which were borrowed from the iEolians : the most remarkable is that 
Bubi , ostis§ i mentioned by Homer as a personification of unap- 
peased hunger, had a temple in Smyrna which was referred to theiEolian 
time|[. 

Notwithstanding these indications, every one who carefully notes in 
the Homeric poems all the symptoms of national feelings and recollec- 
tions of home, will find himself drawn to the other side, and will, with 
Aristarchus, recognize the beat of an Ionic heart in the breast of Homer. 
One proof of this is the reverence which the poet shows for the chief gods 
of the Ionians, and, moreover, in their character of Ionic deities. For 
Pallas Athenaea is described by him as the Athenian goddess, who loves 
to dwell in the temple on the Acropolis of Athens, and also hastens from 
the land of the Phaeacians to Marathon and Athens^" : Poseidon likewise 
is known to Homer as peculiarly the Heliconian god, that is the deity of 
the Ionian league, to whom the Ionians celebrated national festivals both 

* Epigr. Homer, 4. in Pseudo-Herod. 14. 

f Pausan. v. 7, 4, according to Bekker's edition. Fi'om this it appears that Pau- 
sanias makes Melanopus later than Olen, and earlier than Aristeas. 

J See Hellanicus and others in Proclus Vita Homeri, and Pseudo-Herod, c. 1. 

§ II. xxiv. 532 ; and compare the Venetian Scholia. 

j| According to the Ionica of Metrodorus in Plutarch Qucest. Symp. vi. 8, 1. 
Eustathius, on the other hand, ascribes the worship to the Ionians. 

% Od. vii. 80. Compare II. xi. 547. 



46 HISTORY OF THE 

in Peloponnesus and in Asia Minor* : in describing Nestor's sacrifice 
to Poseidon, moreover, the poet doubtless was mindful of those which 
his successors, the Nelids, were wont to solemnize, as kings of the 
Ionians. Among the heroes, Ajax, the son of Telamon, is not repre- 
sented by Homer, as he was by the Dorians of j£gina and most of the 
Greeks, as being an iEacid and the kinsman of Achilles (otherwise some 
mention of this relationship must have occurred), but he is considered 
merely as a hero of Salamis, and is placed in conjunction with Menes- 
theus the Athenian : hence it must be supposed that he, as well as the 
Attic logographer Pherecydes |» considered Ajax as being by origin an 
Attic Salaminian hero. The detailed statement of the Hellenic descent 
of ttie Lycian hero Glaucus in his famous encounter with Diomed, 
gains a fresh interest, when we bear in mind the Ionic kings of the race 
of Glaucus mentioned above \. Moreover, with respect to political insti- 
tutions and political phraseology, there are many symptoms of Ionian 
usage in Homer : thus the Phratrias, mentioned in the Iliad, occur else- 
where only in Ionic states ; the Thetes, as labourers for hire without 
land, are the same in Homer as in Solon's time at Athens ; Demos, also, 
in the sense both of "flat country" and of "common people," appears 
to be an Ionic expression. A Spartan remarks in Plato §, that Homer 
represents an Ionic more than a Lacedaemonian mode of life ; and, in 
truth, many customs and usages may be mentioned, which were spread 
among the Greeks by the Dorians, and of which no trace appears in 
Homer. Lastly, besides the proper localities of the two poems, the 
local knowledge of the poet appears peculiarly accurate and distinct in 
northern Ionia and the neighbouring Maeonia, where the Asian mea- 
dow and the river Cayster with its swans, the Gygaean lake, and Mount 
Tmolus||, where Sipylon with its Achelous^, appear to be known to 
him, as it were, from youthful recollections. 

If one may venture, in this dawn of tradition, to follow the faint light 
of these memorials, and to bring their probable result into connexion 
with the history of Smyrna, the following may be considered as the sum 
of the above inquiries. Homer was an Ionian belonging to one of the 
families which went from Ephesus to Smyrna, at a time when iEolians 
and Achaeans composed the chief part of the population of the city, and 
when, moreover, their hereditary traditions respecting the expedition ot 
the Greeks against Troy excited the greatest interest ; whence he recon- 
ciles in his poetical capacity the conflict of the contending races, inas- 

* Iliad, viii. 203 ; xx.404 ; with the Scholia. Epigr. Horn. vi. in Pseudo-Herod. 17. 

f Apollod. iii. 12, 6. 

\ Above, p. 31, note h. No use has here been made of the suspicious passages, 
which might have been interpolated in the age of Pisistratus. Concerning Homer's 
Attic tendency in mythical points, see also Pseudo-Herod, c. 28. 

§ Leg. iii. p. 680. || Iliad, ii. 865 ; xx. 392. 

•{[ Iliad, xxiv. 615. It is evident from the Scholia that the Homeric Achelous is 
the brook Achelous which runs from Sipylon to Smyrna. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 47 

much as he treats an Achaean subject with the elegance and geniality of 
an Ionian. But when Smyrna drove out the Ionians, it deprived itself 
of this poetical renown ; and the settlement of the Homerids in Chios 
was, in all probability, a consequence of the expulsion of the Ionians 
from Smyrna. 

It may, moreover, be observed that according to this account, founded 
on the history of the colonies of Asia Minor, the time of Homer would 
fall a few generations after the Ionic migration to Asia: and with this 
determination the best testimonies of antiquity agree. Such are the 
computations of Herodotus, who places Homer with Hesiod 400 years 
before his time*, and that of the Alexandrine chronologists, who place 
him 100 years after the Ionic migration, 60 years before the legislation 
of Lycurgust: although the variety of opinions on 'this subject which 
prevailed among the learned writers of antiquity cannot be reduced 
within these limits. 

§ 4. This Homer, then (of the circumstances of whose life we at least 
know the little just stated), was the person who gave epic poetry its first 
great impulse; into the causes of which we shall now proceed to inquire. 
Before Homer, as we have already seen, in general only single actions 
and adventures were celebrated in short lays. The heroic mythology 
had prepared the way for the poets by grouping the deeds of the prin- 
cipal heroes into large masses, so that they had a natural connexion with 
each other, and referred to some common fundamental notion. Now, 
as the general features of the more considerable legendary collections 
were known, the poet had the advantage of being able to narrate any 
one action of Hercules, or of one of the Argive champions against 
Thebes, or of the Achaeans against Troy ; and at the same time of being 
certain that the scope and purport of the action (viz. the elevation of 
Hercules to the gods, and the fated destruction of Thebes and Troy) 
would be present to the minds of his hearers, and that the individual 
adventure would thus be viewed in its proper connexion. Thus doubtless 
for a long time the bards were satisfied with illustrating single points of 
the heroic mythology with brief epic lays ; such as in later times were 
produced by several poets of the school of Hesiod. It was also possible, 
if it was desired, to form from them longer series of adventures of the 
same hero; but they always remained a collection of independent 
poems on the same subject, and never attained to that unity of character 
and composition which constitutes one poem. It was an entirely new 
phenomenon, which could not fail to make the greatest impression, 
when a poet selected a subject of the heroic tradition, which (besides its 
connexion with the other parts of the same legendary cycle) had in itself 
the means of awakening a lively interest, and of satisfying the mind ; 
and at the same time admitted of such a development that the principal 
personages could be represented as acting each with a peculiar and indi- 

* Herod, ii. 53. + Apollod. Fragm, i, p. 410, ed. Heyne. 



48 HISTORY OF THE 

vidual character, without obscuring* the chief hero and the main action 
of the poem. 

One legendary subject, of this extent and interest, Homer found in 
the anger of Achilles ; and another in the return of Ulysses. 

§ 5. The first is an event which did not long precede the final 
destruction of Troy ; inasmuch as it produced the death of Hector, who 
was the defender of the city. It was doubtless the ancient tradition, 
established long before Homer's time, that Hector had been slain by 
Achilles, in revenge for the slaughter of his friend Patroclus : whose fall 
in battle, unprotected by the son of Thetis, was explained by the tradi- 
tion to have arisen from the anger of Achilles against the other Greeks 
for an affront offered to him, and his consequent retirement from the 
contest. Now the poet seizes, as the most critical and momentous period 
of the action, the conversion of Achilles from the foe of the Greeks into 
that of the Trojans ; for as, on the one hand, the sudden revolution in the 
fortunes of war, thus occasioned, places the prowess of Achilles in the 
strongest light, so, on the other hand, the change of his firm and reso- 
lute mind must have been the more touching to the feelings of the 
hearers. From this centre of interest there springs a long preparation 
and gradual development, since not only the cause of the anger of 
Achilles, but also the defeats of the Greeks occasioned by that anger, 
were to be narrated ; and the display of the insufficiency of all the other 
heroes at the same time offered the best opportunity for exhibiting their 
several excellencies. It is in the arrangement of this preparatory part 
and its connexion with the catastrophe that the poet displays his perfect 
acquaintance with all the mysteries of poetical composition ; and in his 
continued postponement of the crisis of the action, and his scanty reve- 
lations with respect to the plan of the entire work, he shows a maturity of 
knowledge, which is astonishing for so early an age. To all appearance 
the poet, after certain obstacles have been first overcome, tends only to 
one point, viz. to increase perpetually the disasters of the Greeks, which 
they have drawn on themselves by the injury offered to Achilles : and 
Zeus himself, at the beginning, is made to pronounce, as coming from him- 
self, the vengeance and consequent exaltation of the son of Thetis. At 
the same time, however, the poet plainly shows his wish to excite in the 
feelings of an attentive hearer an anxious and perpetually increasing 
desire, not only to see the Greeks saved from destruction, but also that 
the unbearable and more than human haughtiness and pride of Achilles 
should be broken. Both these ends are attained through the fulfil- 
ment of the secret counsel of Zeus, which he did not communicate to 
Thetis, and through her to Achilles (who, if he had known it, would 
have given up all enmity against the Achaeans), but only to Hera, and 
to her not till the middle of the poem*; and Achilles, through the loss 

* Thetis hail said nothing to Achilles of the loss of Patroclus (II. xvii. 411), for 
she herself did not know of 4 it. II. xviii. 63. Zeus also long conceals bis jlans 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 49 

of his dearest friend, whom he had sent to battle, not to save the 
Greeks, but for his own glory*, suddenly changes his hostile attitude 
towards the Greeks, and is overpowered by entirely opposite feelings. 
In this manner the exaltation of the son of Thetis is united to that 
almost imperceptible operation of destiny, which the Greeks were re- 
quired to observe in all human affairs. 

It is evident that the Iliad does not so much aim at the individual 
exaltation of Achilles, as at that of the hero before whom all the other 
Grecian heroes humble themselves, and through whom alone the Tro- 
jans were to be subdued. The Grecian poetry has never shown itself 
favourable to the absolute elevation of a single individual, not even if 
he was reckoned the greatest of their heroes ; and hence a character 
like that of Achilles could not excite the entire sympathy of the poet. 
It is clear that the poet conceives his hero as striving after something 
super-human and inhuman. Hence he falls from one excess of passion 
into another, as we see in his insatiable hatred to the Greeks, his despe- 
rate grief for Patroclus, and his vehement anger against Hector ; but still 
it is impossible to deny that Achilles is the first, greatest, and most ele- 
vated character of the Iliad ; we find in him, quite distinct from his 
heroic strength, which far eclipses that of all the others, a god-like lofti- 
ness of soul. Compared with the melancholy which Hector, however 
determined, carries with him to the field of battle, anticipating the dark 
destiny that awaits him, how lofty is the feeling of Achilles, who 
sees his early death before his eyes, and, knowing how close it must 
follow upon the slaughter of Hector f, yet, in spite of this, shows the 
most determined resolution before, and the most dignified calmness after 
the deed. Achilles appears greatest at the funeral games and at the inter- 
view with Priam, — a scene to be compared with no other in ancient poe- 
try; in which, both with the heroes of the event and with the hearers, 
national hatred and personal ambition, and all the hostile and most 
opposite feelings, dissolve themselves into the gentlest and most humane, 
just as the human countenance beams with some new expression after 
long-concealed and passionate grief; and thus the purifying and ele- 
vating process which the character of Achilles undergoes, and by which 
the divine part of his nature is freed from all obscurities, is one continued 
idea running through the whole of the poem ; and the manner in which 
this process is at the same time communicated to the mind of a hearer 

from Hera and the other gods, notwithstanding their anger on account of the suf- 
ferings of the Achseans: lie does not reveal them to Hera till after his sleep upon 
Ida. II. xv. 65. The spuriousness of the verses (II. viii. 475 — 6) was recognized by the 
ancients, although the principal objection to them is not mentioned. See Schol. 
Ven. A. 

* Homer does not wish that the going forth of Patroclus should be considered as 
a sign that Achilles' wrath is appeased : Achilles, on this very occasion, expresses a 
wish that no Greek may escape death, but that they two alone, Achilles and Patro 
clus, may mount the walls of Ilion. 11. xvi. 97. 

f Iliad, xviii. 95 j xix. 417. 

E 



50 HISTORY OF THE 

absorbed with the subject, makes it the most beautiful and powerful charm 
of the Iliad. 

§ 6. To remove from this collection of various actions, conditions, and 
feelings any substantial part, as not necessarily belonging to it, would in 
fact be to dismember a living whole, the parts of which would neces- 
sarily lose their vitality. As in an organic body life does not dwell in one 
single point, but requires a union of certain systems and members, so 
the internal connexion of the Iliad rests on the union of certain parts ; 
and neither the interesting introduction describing the defeat of the 
Greeks up to the burning of the ship of Protesilaus, nor the turn of 
affairs brought about by the death of Fatroelus, nor the final pacifi- 
cation of the anger of Achilles, could be spared from the Iliad, 
when the fruitful seed of such a poem had once been sown in the 
soul of Homer, and had begun to develop its growth. But the plan of 
the Iliad is certainly very much extended beyond what was actually 
necessary ; and, in particular, the preparatory part consisting of the 
attempts of the other heroes to compensate the Greeks for the absence 
of Achilles, has, it must be said, been drawn out to a disproportionate 
length ; so that the suspicion that there were later insertions of import- 
ant passages, on the whole applies with far more probability to the first 
than to the last books, in which, however, modern critics have found most 
traces of interpolation. For this extension there were two principal 
motives, which (if we may carry our conjectures so far) exercised an 
influence even on the mind of Homer himself, but had still more pow- 
erful effects upon his successors, the later Homerids. In the first place, 
it is clear that a design manifested itself at an early period to make this 
poem complete in, itself, so that all the subjects, descriptions, and actions, 
which could alone give an interest to a poem on the entire war, might 
find a place within the limits of this composition. For this purpose it 
is not improbable that many lays of earlier bards, who had sung single 
adventures of the Trojan war, were laid under contribution, and that the 
finest parts of them were adopted into the new poem ; it being the natu- 
ral course of popular poetry propagated by oral tradition, to treat the 
best thoughts of previous poets as common property, and to give them 
a new life by working them up in a different context. 

If in this manner much extraneous matter has been introduced into 
the poem, which, in common probability, does not agree with the defi- 
nite event which forms the subject of it, but would more pro- 
perly find its place at an earlier stage of the Trojan war ; and if, by this 
means, from a poem on the Anger of Achilles, it grew into an Iliad, as 
it is significantly called, yet the poet had his justification, in the manner 
in which he conceived the situation of the contending nations, and their 
mode of warfare, until the separation of Achilles from the rest of the 
army, in which he, doubtless, mainly followed the prevalent legends of 
this time. According to the accounts of the cyclic and later poets (in 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 51 

whose time, although the heroic traditions may have become more 
meagre and scanty than they had been in that of Homer, yet the chief 
occurrences must have been still preserved in memory), the Trojans, 
after the Battle at the Landing*, where Hector killed Protesilaus, but 
was soon put to flight by Achilles, made no attempt to drive the Greeks 
from their country, up to the time of the separation of Achilles from the 
rest of the army, and the Greeks had had time (for the wall of Troy still 
resisted them) to lay waste, under the conduct of Achilles, the surround- 
ing- cities and islands ; of which Homer mentions particularly Pedasus, 
the city of the Leleges ; the Cilician Thebe, at the foot of Mount Placus ; 
the neighbouring- city of Lyrnessus ; and also the islands of Lesbos and 
Tenedos*. The poet, in various places, shows plainly his notion of the 
state of the war at this time, viz., that the Trojans, so long as Achilles 
took part in the war, did not venture beyond the gates ; and if Hector 
was, perchance, willing to venture a sally, the general fear of Achilles 
and the anxiety of the Trojan elders held him back j\ By this view of 
the contest, the poet is sufficiently justified in bringing within the com- 
pass of the Iliad events which would otherwise have been more fitted 
for the beginning of the war. The Greeks now arrange themselves for 
the first time, by the advice of , Nestor, into tribes and phratrias, which 
affords an occasion for the enumeration of the several nations, or the 
Catalogue of Ships (as it is called), in the second book; and when this 
has made us acquainted with the general arrangement of the army, then the 
view of Helen and Priam from the walls, in the third book, and Agamem- 
non's mustering of the troops, in the fourth, are intended to give a more 
distinct notion of the individual character of the chief heroes. Further 
on, the Greeks and Trojans are, for the first time, struck by an idea 
which might have occurred in the previous nine years, if the Greeks, 
when assisted by Achilles, had not, from their confidence of their supe- 
rior strength, considered every compromise as unworthy of them ; namely, 
to decide the war by a single combat between the authors of it ; which 
plan is frustrated by the cowardly flight of Paris and the treachery of 
Pandarus. Nor is it until they are taught by the experience of the first 
day's fighting that the Trojans can resist them in open battle, that they 
build the walls round their ships, in which the omission of the proper 
sacrifices to the gods is given as a new reason for not fulfilling their 
intentions. This appeared to Thucydides so little conformable to histo- 
rical probability, that, without regarding the authority of Homer, he 

* The question why the Trojans did not attack the Greeks when Achilles was 
engaged in these maritime expeditions must he answered by history, not by the 
mythical tradition. It is also remarkable that Homer knows of no Achaean hero 
who had fallen in battle with the Trojans after Protesilaus, and before the time of 
the Iliad. See particularly Od. iii. \0b,seg. Nor is any Trojan mentioned who 
had fallen in battle. ./Eneas and Lycaon were surprised when engaged in peaceable 
occupations, and a similar supposition must be made with regard to Nestor and 
Troilus. II. xxiv. 257. 

f II. v. 788; ix. 252; xv. 721. 

E 2 



f>2 HISTORY OF Tilt 

placed the building' of these walls immediately after the landing*. 
This endeavour to comprehend every thing in one poem also shows itself 
in another circumstance, — that some of the events of the war lying 
within this poem are copied from others not included in it. Thus the 
wounding of Diomed by Paris, in the heel f, is taken from the story of 
the death of Achilles, and the same event furnishes the general outlines 
of the death of Patroclus; as in both, a god and a man together bring 
about the accomplishment of the will of fate }. 

§ 7. The other motive for the great extension of the preparatory part 
of the catastrophe may, it appears, be traced to a certain conflict between 
the plcui of the poet and his own patriotic feelings. An attentive reader 
cannot fail to observe that while Homer intends that the Greeks should 
be made to suffer severely from the anger of Achilles, he is yet, as it 
were, retarded in his progress towards that end by a natural endeavour 
to avenge the death of each Greek by that of a yet more illustrious 
Trojan, and thus to increase the glory of the numerous Achaean heroes ; 
so that, even on the days in which the Greeks are defeated, more Trojans 
than Greeks are described as being slain. Admitting that the poet, 
living among the descendants of these Achaean heroes, found more 
legends about them than about the Trojans in circulation, still the intro- 
duction of them into a poem, in which these very Achaeans were de- 
scribed as one of the parties in a war, could not fail to impart to it a 
national character. How short is the narration of the second day's 
battle in the eighth book, where the incidents follow their direct course, 
under the superintendence of Zeus, and the poet is forced to allow the 
Greeks to be driven back to their camp (yet even then not without 
severe loss to the Trojans), in comparison with the narrative of the first 
day's battle, which, besides many others, celebrates the exploits of 
Diomed, and extends from the second to the seventh book ; in which Zeus 
appears, as it were, to have forgotten his resolution and his promise to 
Thetis. The exploits of Diomed § are indeed closely connected with 
the violation of the treaty, inasmuch as the death of Pandarus, which 
became necessary in order that his treachery might be avenged, is the 
work of Tydides || ; but they have been greatly extended, particularly by 
the battles with the gods, which form the characteristic feature of the 
legend of Diomed ^| : hence in this part of the Iliad particularly, slight 

* Thuc. i. 11. The attempt of the scholiast to remove the difficulty, hy supposing 
a smaller and a larger bulwark, is absurd. 
+ II. xi. 377. 

I II. xix. 417 ; xxii. 359. It was the fate of Achilles, &<Sj n xtu uAoi tyi luutvui. 

§ Atofi'/^ov; u.(3i<T<7Uoc 

I I II. v. 290. Homer does not make on this occasion the reflection which one 
expects; but it is his practice rather to leave the requisite morul impression to be 
made by the simple combination of the events, without adding any comment of his 
own. 

^[ Diomed, in the Argive mytholog)', which referred to Pallas, was a being closely 
connected with this goddess, her shield-bearer and defender of the Palladium. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 53 

inconsistencies of different passages and interruptions in the connexion 
have arisen. We may mention especially the contradictory expressions of 
Diomed and his counsellor Athena, as to whether a contest with the gods 
was advisable or not*. Another inconsistency is that remarked by the 
ancients with respect to the breastplate of Diomedf; this, however, is re- 
moved, if we consider the scene between Diomed and Glancus as an inter- 
polation added by an Homerid of Chios; perhaps^, with the view of doing 
honour to some king of the race of Glaucus }. With regard to the 
night-scenes, which take up the tenth book §, a remarkable statement 
has been preserved, that they were originally a separate book, and were 
first inserted in the Iliad by Pisistratus||. This account is so far sup- 
ported, that not the slightest reference is made, either before or after, 
to the contents of this book, especially to the arrival of Rhesus in the 
Trojan camp, and of his horses taken by Diomed and Ulysses; and the 
whole book may be omitted without leaving any perceptible chasm. 
But it is evident that this book was written for the particular place in 
which we find it, in order to fill up the remainder of the night, and to 
add another to the achievements of the Grecian heroes ; for it could 
neither stand by itself nor form a part of any other poem. 

§ 8. That the first part of the Iliad, up to the Battle at the Ships, has, 
as compared with the remaining part, a more cheerful, sometimes even a 
jocose character, while the latter has a grave and tragic cast, which 
extends its influence even over the choice of expressions, naturally 
arises from the nature of the subject itself. The ill-treatment of Ther- 
sites, the cowardly flight of Paris into the arms of Helen, the credulous 
folly of Pandarus, the bellowing of Mars, and the feminine tears of 
Aphrodite when wounded by Diomed, are so many amusing and even 
sportive passages from the first books of the Iliad, such as cannot be 
found in any of the latter books. The countenance of the ancient bard, 
which in the beginning assumed a serene character, and is sometimes 
brightened with an ironical smile, obtains by degrees an excited tragic 
expression. Although there are good grounds in the plan of the Iliad 
for this difference, yet there is reason to doubt whether the beginning of 

Hence he is, in Homer, placed in a closer relation with the Olympic gods than any 
other hero: Pallas driving his chariot, and giving him courage to encounter Ares, 
Aphrodite, and even Apollo, in battle. It is particularly observable that Diomed 
never rights with Hector, but with Ares, who enables Hector to conquer. 

*I1. v. 130, 434, 827; vi. 128. 

f II. vi. 230; and viii. 194. Tbe inconsistency with regard to Pylaemenes is also 
removed, it* Ave sacrifice v. 579, and retain xiii. 6f>8. Of less importance, as it seems 
to me, is the oblivion of the message to Achilles, which is laid to the charge of 
Patroclus. II. xi. 839; xv. 390. Muy not Patroclus have sent a messenger to 
inform Achilles of what he wished to know ? The non-observance by Polydamas of 
the advice which he himself gives to Hector (II. xii. 75 ; xv. 354, 447 ; xvi. 307) is 
easily excused by the natural weakness of humanity. 

I Above, p. 31, note §. 

§ 'isuKTiyi^ffta and AoXcuviia. 

|| Schol. Yen. ad II. ac 1 j Eustath. p. 785, 41, ed. Rom, 



54 HISTORY OF THE 

the second book, in which this humorous tone is most apparent, was 
written by the ancient Homer or by one of the later Honierids. Zeus 
undertakes to deceive Agamemnon, for, by means of a dream, he gives 
him great courage for the battle. Agamemnon himself adopts a second 
deceit against the Achseans, for he, though full of the hopes of victory, 
yet persuades the Achaeans that he has determined on the return home ; 
in this, however, his expectations are again deceived in a ludicrous man- 
ner by the Greeks, whom he had only wished to try, in order to stimu- 
late them to the battle, but who now are determined to fly in the ut- 
most haste, and, contrary to the decree of fate, to leave Troy uninjured, if 
Ulysses, at the suggestion of the gods, had not held them back. Here 
is matter for an entire mythical comedy, full of fine irony, and with an 
amusing plot, in which the deceiving and deceived Agamemnon is the 
chief character ; who, with the words, " Zeus has played me a pretty 
trick*," at the same time that he means to invent an ingenious false- 
hood, unconsciously utters an unpleasant truth. But this Homeric 
comedy, which is extended through the greater part of the second book, 
cannot possibly belong to the original plan of the Iliad ; for Agamem- 
non, two days later, complaining to the Greeks of being deceived by 
former signs of victory which Zeus had shown him, uses in earnest the 
same words which he had here used in joke f . But it is not conceivable 
that Agamemnon (if the laws of probability were respected) should be 
represented as able seriously to repeat the complaint which he had before 
feigned, without, at the same time, dwelling on the inconsistency be- 
tween his present and his former opinion. It is, moreover, evident, 
that the graver and shorter passage did not grow out of the more comic 
and longer one ; but that the latter is a copious parody of the former, 
composed by a later Homerid, and inserted in the room of an original 
shorter account of the arming of the Greeks. 

§ 9. But of all the parts of the Iliad, there is none of which the dis- 
crepancies with the rest of the poem are so manifest as the Cata- 
logue of the Ships, already alluded to. Even the ancients had critical 
doubts on some passages ; as, for instance, the manifestly intentional 
association of the ships of Ajax with those of the Athenians, which 
appears to have been made solely for the interest of the Athenian 
houses (the Eurysacids and Philaids), which deduced their origin from 
Ajax ; and the mention of the Panhellenians, whom (contrary to Homer's 
invariable usage) the Locrian Ajax surpasses in the use of the spear. 
But still more important are the mythico-historical discrepancies between 
the Catalogue and the Iliad itself. Meges, the son of Phyleus, is in 
the Catalogue King of Dulichium ; in the Iliad J, King of the Epeans, 
dwelling in Elis. The Catalogue here follows the tradition, which was 

* II. ii. 114, vuv Ti x&xriv aTar'/iv $ov"kVJiTa.-o. 

f II. ii. 111—18 and 139—41 correspond to I!, ix. IS— 23. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE 55 

also known in later times*, that Phyleus, the father of Meges, quarrelled 
with his father Augeas, and left his home on this account. Medon, a 
natural son of Oileus, is described in the Catalogue as commanding* the 
troops of Philoctetes, which come from Methone ; but in the Iliad as lead- 
ing the Phthianst, inhabiting Phy lace, who, in the Catalogue, form quite 
a different kingdom, and are led by Podarces instead of Protesilaus. With 
such manifest contradictions as these one may venture to attach some 
weight to the less obvious marks of a fundamental difference of views of 
a more general kind. Agamemnon, according to the Iliad, governs from 
Mycenae the whole of Argos (that is, the neighbouring part of Peloponne- 
sus), and many islands j ; according to the Catalogue, he governs no islands 
whatever ; but, on the other hand, his kingdom comprises iEgialeia, 
which did not become Achaean till after the expulsion of the Ionians§. 
With respect to the Boeotians, the poets of the Catalogue have entirely 
forgotten that they dwelt in Thessaly at the time of the Trojan war ; for 
they describe the whole nation as already settled in the country after- 
wards called Bceotia||. That heroes and troops of men joined the 
Achaean army from the eastern side of the .ZEgean'Sea and the islands 
on the coast of Asia Minor, is a notion of which the Iliad offers no 
trace ; it knows nothing of the heroes of Cos, Phidippus and Antiphus, 
nor anything of the beautiful Nireus from Syme ; and as it is not said of 
Tlepolemus that he came from Rhodes, but only that he was a son of 
Hercules, it is most natural to understand that the poet of the Iliad 
conceived him as a Tirynthian hero. The mention in the Catalogue of 
a whole line of islands on the coast of Asia Minor destroys the beauty 
and unity of the picture of the belligerent nations contained in the Iliad, 
which makes the allies of the Trojans come only from the east and north 
of the iEgean Sea, and Achaean warriors come only from the west^. 
The poets of the Catalogue have also made the Arcadians under Aga- 
penor, as well as the Perrhaebians and the Magnetes, fight before Troy. 
The purer tradition of the Iliad does not mix up these Pelasgic tribes 
(for, among all the Greeks, the Arcadians and Perrhaebians remained 
most Pelasgic) in the ranks of the Achaean army. 

If the enumeration of the Achaean bands is too detailed, and goes 
beyond the intention of the original poet of the Iliad, on the other hand, 
the Catalogue of the Trojans and their allies is much below the notion 

* Callimachus ap. Schol. II. ii. 629. Comp. Theocrit. xxi. 

f II. xiii. 693 ; xv. 334. $ II. ii. 108. 

§ Here, in particular, the verse (11. ii. 572), in which Adrastus is named as first 
king of Sicyon, compared with Herod, v. 67 — 8, clearly shows the objects of the 
Argive rhapsodist. 

|| There is, likewise, in the Iliad a passage (not, indeed, of much importance) which 
speaks of Bwotians in Bosotia. II. v. 709. For this reason Thucydides assumed that 
an uTobodr^h of the Boeotians had at this time settled in Bceotia; which, however, 
is not sufficient for the Catalogue. 

•jl The account of the Hkodians in the Catalogue also, by its great lengih, betrays 
the intention of a rhapsodist to celebrate this island. 



56 HISTORY OF THE 

which the Iliad itself gives of the forces of the Trojans: this altogether omits 
the important allies, the Caucones and the Leleges, both of whom often 
occur in the Iliad, and the latter inhabited the celebrated city of Pedasus, 
on the Satnioeis *. Among the princes unmentioned in this Catalogue, 
Asteropaeus, the leader and hero of the Paeonians, is particularly ob- 
servable, who arrived eleven days before the battle with Achilles, and, 
therefore, before the review in the second book t, and at least deserved 
to be named as well as Pyraechmes J. On the other hand, this Catalogue 
has some names, which are wanting in the parts of the Iliad, where they 
would naturally recur §. But we have another more decided proof that 
the Catalogue of the Trojans is of comparatively recent date, and was 
composed after that of the Achaeans. The Cyprian poem, which was 
intended solely to serve as an introduction to the Iliad ||, gave at its con- 
clusion (that is, immediately before the beginning of the action of the 
Iliad) a list of the Trojan allies^"; which certainly would not have been 
the case if, in the second book of the Iliad, as it then existed, not the 
Achaeans alone but also the Trojans had been enumerated. Perhaps 
our present Catalogue in the Iliad is only an abridgment of that in the 
Cyprian poem ; at least, then, the omission of Asteropaeus could be ex- 
plained, for if he came eleven days before the battle just mentioned, 
he would not (according to Homer's chronology) have arrived till after 
the beginning of the action of the Iliad, that is, the sending of the 
plague. 

But from the observations on these two Catalogues may be drawn 
other inferences, besides that they are not of genuine Homeric origin : 
first, that the rhapsodists, who composed these parts, had not the Iliad 
before them in writing, so as to be able to refer to it at pleasure ; other- 
wise, how should they not have discovered that Medon lived at Phy- 
lace, and such like particulars; 2dly, that these later poets did not 
retain the entire Iliad in their memory, but that in this attempt to give 
an ethnographical survey of the forces on each side, they allowed them- 
selves to be guided by the parts which they themselves knew by heart 
and could recite, and by less distinct reminiscences of the rest of the 
poem. 

§ 10. A far less valid suspicion than that which has been raised 

* For the Caucones, see II. x. 429 ; xx. 329. For the Leleges, II. x. 429 ; xx. 96 ; 
xxi. 86. Comp. vi. 35. 

-J- See II. xxi. 155 ; also xii. 102 ; xviii. 351. 

J II. ii. 848. The author of this Catalogue must have thought only of II. xvi. 287. 
The scholiast, on II. ii. 844, is also quite correct in missing Jphidamas ; who, indeed, 
was a Trojan, the son of Antenor and Theano, hut was furnished by his maternal 
grandfather, a Thracian prince, with a fleet of twelve ships. 11. xi. 221. 

§ For example, the soothsayer Eunomus, who, according to the Catalogue (11. ii. 
861), was slain by Achilles in the river, of which there is no mention in the Iliad. 
So likewise Amphimachus. II. ii. 871. 

j| See below, chap. vi. § 4. 

% scat KdraXoyo; tuv <ro7; Truei gv[/.(jmwtu.\<tuv } Prcclus in Gaisford's Hephaestion; 
p. 476. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 57 

against the first part of the Iliad, principally against the second, and 
also against the fifth, sixth, and tenth books, rests on the later ones, 
and on those which follow the death of Hector. A tragedy, which 
treated its subject dramatically, might indeed have closed with the 
death of Hector, but no epic poem could have been so concluded ; as in 
that it is necessary that the feeling which has been excited should be 
allowed to subside into calm. This efFect is, in the first place, brought 
about by means of the games ; by which the greatest honour is conferred 
on Patroclus, and also a complete satisfaction is made to Achilles. But 
neither would the Iliad at any time have been complete without the 
cession of the body of Hector to his father, and the honourable burial 
of the Trojan hero. The poet, who everywhere else shows so gentle 
and humane a disposition, and such an endeavour to distribute even- 
handed justice throughout his poem, could not allow the threats of 
Achilles* to be fulfilled on the body of Hector; but even if this had 
been the poet's intention, the subject must have been mentioned ; for, 
according to the notions of the Greeks of that age, the fate of the dead 
body was almost of more importance than that of the living ; and in- 
stead of our twenty-fourth book, a description must have followed of the 
manner in which Achilles ill-treated the corpse of Hector, and then cast 
it for food to the dogs. Who could conceive such an end to the Iliad 
possible ? It is plain that Homer, from the first, arranged the plan of 
the Iliad with a full consciousness that the anger of Achilles against 
Hector stood in need of some mitigation — of some kind of atonement — 
and that a gentle, humane disposition, awaiting futurity with calm feel- 
ings, was requisite both to the hero and the poet at the end of the poem. 

§ 11. The Odyssey is indisputably, as well as the Iliad, a poem pos- 
sessing an unity of subject ; nor can any one of its chief parts be re- 
moved without leaving a chasm in the development of the leading idea; 
but it diners from the Iliad in being composed on a more artificial and 
more complicated plan. This is the case partly, because in the first and 
greater half, up to the sixteenth book, two main actions are carried on 
side by side ; partly because the action, which passes within the compass 
of the poem, and as it were beneath our eyes, is greatly extended by 
means of an episodical narration, by which the chief action itself is 
made distinct and complete, and the most marvellous and strangest part 
of the story is transferred from the mouth of the poet to that of the 
inventive hero himself f. 

The subject of the Odyssey is the return of Ulysses from a land 
lying beyond the range of human intercourse or knowledge, to a home 
invaded by bands of insolent intruders, who seek to rob him of his wife, 
and kill his son. Hence, the Odyssey begins exactly at that point, 

* II. xxii. 33; xxiii. 183. 
f It appears, however, from his soliloquy, Od. xx. 18 — 21, that the poet did not 
intend his adventures to be considered as imaginary. 



5S HISTORY OF THE 

where the hero is considered to be farthest from his home, in the island 
of Ogygia*, at the navel, that is, the central point of the sea; where 
the nymph Calypso f has kept him hidden from all mankind for seven 
years ; thence having, by the help of the gods, who pity his misfortunes, 
passed through the dangers prepared for him by his implacable enemy, 
Poseidon, he gains the land of the Phseacians, a careless, peaceable, and 
effeminate nation on the confines of the earth, to whom war is only 
known by means of poetry ; borne by a marvellous Phaeacian vessel, he 
reaches Ithaca sleeping ; here he is entertained by the honest swine- 
herd Eumseus, and having been introduced into his own house as a beg- 
gar, he is there made to suffer the harshest treatment from the suitors, in 
order that he may afterwards appear with the stronger right as a terri- 
ble avenger. With this simple story a poet might have been satisfied ; 
and we should even in this form, notwithstanding its smaller extent, 
have placed the poem almost on an equality with the Iliad. But the 
poet, to whom we are indebted tor the Odyssey in its complete form, has 
interwoven a second story, by which the poem is rendered much richer 
and more complete ; although, indeed, from the union of two actions, 
some roughnesses have been produced, which perhaps with a plan of 
this kind could scarcely be avoided J. 

For while the poet represents the son of Ulysses, stimulated by 
Athena, coming forward in Ithaca with newly excited courage, and 
calling the suitors to account before the people ; and then afterwards 
describes him as travelling to Pylos and Sparta to obtain intelligence of 
his lost father ; he gives us a picture of Ithaca and its anarchical con- 
dition, and of the rest of Greece in its state of peace after the return of 
the princes, which produces the finest contrast; and, at the same 
time, prepares Telemachus for playing an energetic part in the work of 
vengeance, which by this means becomes more probable. 

Although these remarks show that the arrangement of the Odyssey 
is essentially different from that of the Iliad, and bears marks of a more 
artificial and more fully developed state of the epos, yet there is much 
that is common to the two poems in this respect ; particularly that pro- 
found comprehension of the means of straining the curiosity, and of 
keeping up the interest by new and unexpected turns of the narrative. 
The decree of Zeus is as much delayed in its execution in the Odyssey 
as it is in the Iliad : as, in the latter poem, it is not till after the building 
of the walls that Zeus, at the request of Thetis, takes an active part 

* 'tiyvyia, from 'Q.yvy/i;, who was originally a deity of the watery expanse which 
covers all things. 

■j- KkXv-^u, the Concealer. 

+ There would be nothing abrupt in the transition from Menelaus to the suitors 
in Od. iv. 624, if it fell at the beginning of a new book ; and, yet this division into 
books is a mere contrivance of the Alexandrine grammarians. The four verses 620-4, 
which are unquestionably spurious, are a mere useless interpolation ; as they contri- 
bute nothing to the junction of the parts, 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 59 

against the Greeks ; so, in the Odyssey, he appears at the very begin- 
ning willing to acquiesce in the proposal of Athena for the return of 
Ulysses, but does not in reality despatch Hermes to Calypso till several 
days later, in the fifth book. It is evident that the poet is impressed 
with a conception familiar to the Greeks, of a divine destiny, slow in 
its preparations, and apparently delaying, but on that very account 
marching with the greater certainty to its end. We also perceive in the 
Odyssey the same artifice as that pointed out in the Iliad, of turning the 
expectation of the reader into a different direction from that which the 
narrative is afterwards to take; but, from the nature of the subject, chiefly 
in single scattered passages. The poet plays in the most agreeable 
manner with us, by holding out other means by which the necessary 
work of vengeance on the suitors maybe accomplished ; and also after we 
have arrived somewhat nearer the true aim, he still has in store another 
beautiful invention with which to surprise us. Thus the exhortation twice 
addressed to Telemachus in the same words, in the early books of the 
Odyssey, to imitate the example of Orestes* (which strikes deep root in 
his heart), produces an undefined expectation that he himself may attempt 
something against the suitors ; nor is the true meaning of it perceived, 
until Telemachus places himself so undauntedly at his father's side. After- 
wards, when the father and son have arranged their plan for taking 
vengeance, they think of assaulting the suitors, hand to hand, with lance 
and sword, in a combat of very doubtful issue f. The bow of Eurytus, 
from which Ulysses derives such great advantage, is a new and unex- 
pected idea. Athena suggests to Penelope the notion of proposing it to 
the suitors as a prize j, and although the ancient legend doubtless repre- 
sented Ulysses overcoming the suitors with this bow, yet the manner in 
which it is brought into his hands is a very ingenious contrivance of the 
poet§. As in the Iliad the deepest interest prevails between the Battle 
at the Ships and the Death of Hector, so in the Odyssey the narrative 
begins, with the fetching of the bow (at the outset of the twenty-first 
book), to assume a lofty tone, which is mingled with an almost painful 
expectation ; and the poet makes use of every thing which the legend 
offered, as the gloomy forebodings of Theoclymenus (who is only intro- 
duced in order to prepare for this scene of horror ||) and the contempo- 

-Od. i. 302; iii. 200. 

f Od. xvi. 295. The aSirmrn of Zenodotus, as usual, rests on insufficient grounds, 
and would deprive the story of an important point of its progress. 

| Od. xxi. 4. 

§ That this part of the poem is founded on ancient tradition appears from the 
fact that the ^Rtolian tribe of* the Eurytanians, who derived their origin from Eurytus 
(probably the yEtolian CEchalia also belonged to this nation, Strabo, x. p. 448), pos- 
sessed an oracle of Ulysses. Lycophron, v. 799 ; and the Scholia from Aristotle. 

|| Among these the disappearance of the sun (Od. xx. 35G) is to be observed, which 
is connected with the return of Ulysses during the new moon (Od. xiv. 162; xix. 
307), when an eclipse of the sun could take place. This ah;o appears to be a trace 
of ancient tradition. 



GO HISTORY OF THE 

.raucous festival of Apollo (who fully grants the prayer of Ulysses to 
secure him glory in the battle with the bow*), in order to heighten the 
marvellous and inspiriting parts of the scene. 

§ 12. It is plain that the plan of the Odyssey, as well as of the Iliad, 
offered many opportunities for enlargement, by the insertion of new 
passages ; and many irregularities in the course of the narration and its 
occasional diffuseness may be explained in this manner. The latter, for 
example, is observable in the amusements offered to Ulysses when en- 
tertained by the Pharacians ; and even some of the ancients questioned 
the genuineness of the passage about the dance of the Phseacians and 
the song of Demodocus on the loves of Ares and Aphrodite, although 
this part of the Odyssey appears to have been at least extant in the 50th 
Olympiad, when the chorus of the Phseacians was represented on the 
throne of the Amyclsean Apollo f . So likewise Ulysses' account of his 
adventures contains many interpolations, particularly in the nekyia, or 
invocation of the dead, where the ancients had already attributed an 
important passage (which, in fact, destroys the unity and connexion of 
the narrative) to the diaskeuastce, or interpolators, among others, to the 
Orphic Onomacritus, who, in the time of the Pisistratids, was employed 
in collecting the poems of Homer +. Moreover, the Alexandrine critics, 
Aristophanes and Aristarchus, considered the whole of the last part 
from the recognition of Penelope, as added at a later period §. Nor can 
it be denied that it has great defects; in particular, the description of the 
arrival of the suitors in the infernal regions is only a second and feebler 
nekyia, which does not precisely accord with the first, and is introduced 
in this place without sufficient reason. At the same time, the Odyssey 
could never have been considered as concluded, until Ulysses had 
embraced his father Laertes, who is so often mentioned in the course of 
the poem, and until a peaceful state of things had been restored, or 
began to be restored, in Ithaca. It is not therefore likely that the original 
Odyssey altogether wanted some passage of this kind ; but it was pro- 
bably much altered by the Homerids, until it assumed the form in which 
we now possess it. 

§ 13. That the Odyssey was written after the Iliad, and that many 
differences are apparent in the character and manners both of men and 
gods, as well as in the management of the language, is quite clear ; but 

* The festival of Apollo (the vtopwios) is alluded to. Od. xx. 156, 250, 278; xxi. 
258. Comp. xxi. 267; xxii. 7. 

f Pausau. iii. 18, 7. 

I See Schol. Od. xi. 104. The entire passage, from xi. 568-626, was rejected by 
the ancients, and with good reason. For whereas Ulysses elsewhere is represented 
as merely, by means of his libation of blood, enticing the shades from their dark 
abodes to the asphodel-meadow, where he is standing, as it were, at the gate of 
Hades ; in this passage he appears in the midst of the dead, who are firmly bound to 
certain spots in the infernal regions. The same more recent conception prevails in 
Od. xxiv. 13, where the dead dwell on the asphodel-meadow. 

§ From Od. xxiii. 296, to the end. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 61 

it is difficult and hazardous to raise upon this foundation any definite 
conclusions as to the person and age of the poet. With the exception of 
the anger of Poseidon, who always works unseen in the obscure distance, 
the gods appear in a milder form ; they act in unison, without dissension 
or contest, for the relief of mankind, not, as is so often the case in the 
Iliad, for their destruction. It is, however, true, that the subject afforded 
far less occasion for describing' the violent and angry passions and vehe- 
ment combats of the gods. At the same time the gods all appear a step 
higher above the human race ; they are not represented as descending 
in a bodily form from their dwellings on Mount Olympus, and mixing 
in the tumult of the battle, but they go about in human forms, only dis- 
cernible by their superior wisdom and prudence, in the company of the 
adventurous Ulysses and the intelligent Telemachus. But the chief 
cause of this difference is to be sought in the nature of the story, and, we 
may add, in the fine tact of the poet, who knew how to preserve unity 
of subject and harmony of tone in his picture, and to exclude every 
thing of which the character did not agree. The attempt of many 
learned writers to discover a different religion and mythology for the 
Iliad and the Odyssey leads to the most arbitrary dissection of the two 
poems * ; above all, it ought to have been made clear how the fable of 
the Iliad could have been treated by a professor of this supposed religion 
of the Odyssey, without introducing quarrels, battles, and vehement 
excitement among the gods ; in which there would have been no diffi- 
culty, if the difference of character in the gods of the two poems were 
introduced by the poet, and did not grow out of the subject. On the 
other hand, the human race appears in the houses of Nestor, Menelaus, 
and especially of Alcinous, in a far more agreeable state, and one of far 
greater comfort f and luxury than in the Iliad. But where could the 
enjoyments, to which the Atridse, in their native palace, and the peace- 
able Phaeacians could securely abandon themselves, find a place in the 
rough camp? Granting, however, that a different taste and feeling is 
shown in the choice of the subject, and in the whole arrangement of the 
poem, yet there is not a greater difference than is often found in the 
inclinations of the same man in the prime of life and in old" age ; and, to 
speak candidly, we know no other argument adduced by the Chorizontcsl, 
both of ancient and modern times, for attributing the wonderful genius 
of Homer to two different individuals. It is certain that the Odyssey, 
in respect of its plan and the conception of its chief characters, of Ulysses 

* Benjamin Constant, in particular, in his celebrated work, De la Religion, torn. iii. 
has been forced to go this length, as he distinguishes trois espcces de mythology in tho 
Homeric poems, and determines from them the age of the different parts. 

f The Greek word for this is Kopikh ; which, in the Iliad, is only used for the care 
of horses, but in the Odyssey signifies human conveniences and luxuries, amoii"- 
which hot baths may be particularly mentioned. See Od. viii. 450. 

I Those Greek grammarians who attributed the Iliad and Odyssey to different 
authors were called oi %agigovrt;, " The Separaters." 



It histohy of the 

himself, of Nestor and Menelaus, stands in the closest affinity with the 
Iliad ; that it always presupposes the existence of the earlier poem, and 
silently refers to it; which also serves to explain the remarkable faet, 
that the Odyssey mentions many occurrences in the life of Ulysses, 
which lie out of the compass of the action, but not one which is celebrated 
in the Iliad*. If the completion of the Iliad and the Odyssey seems 
too vast a work for the lifetime of one man, we may, perhaps, have 
recourse to the supposition, that Homer, after having sung* the Iliad in 
the vigour of his youthful years, in his old age communicated to some 
devoted disciple the plan of the Odyssey, which had long been working 
in his mind, and left it to him for completion. 

§ 14. It is certain that we are perpetually met with difficulties in en- 
deavouring to form a notion of the manner in which these great epic 
poems were composed, at a time anterior to the use of writing. But 
these difficulties arise much more from our ignorance of the period, and 
our incapability of conceiving a creation of the mind without those appli- 
ances of which the use has become to us a second nature, than in the 
general laws of the human intellect. Who can determine how many 
thousand verses a person, thoroughly impregnated with his subject, and 
absorbed in the contemplation of it, might produce in a year, and con- 
fide to the faithful memory of disciples, devoted to their master and his 
art ? Wherever a creative genius has appeared it has met with persons 
of congenial taste, and has found assistants, by whose means it has 
completed astonishing works in a comparatively short time. Thus ^the 
old bard may have been followed by a number of younger minstrels, to 
whom it was both a pleasure and a duty to collect and diffuse the honey 
which flowed from his lips. But it is, at least, certain, that it would be 
unintelligible how these great epics were composed, unless there had 
been occasions, on which they actually appeared in their integrity, and 
could charm an attentive hearer with the full force and effect of a com- 
plete poem. Without a connected and continuous recitation they were 
not finished works ; they were mere disjointed fragments, which might 
by possibility form a whole. But where were there meals or festivals 
long enough for such recitations? What attention, it has been asked, 
could be sufficiently sustained, in order to follow so many thousand 
verses? If, however, the Athenians could at one festival hear in suc- 
cession about nine tragedies, three satyric dramas, and as many comedies, 

* We find Ulysses, in his youth, with Autolycus (Od. xix. 394 ; xxiv. 331) during 
the expedition against Troy in Delos, Od. vi. 162 ; in Lesbos, iv. 341 ; in a contest 
with Achilles, viii. 75; near the corpse and at the burial of Achilles, v. 308; xxiv. 
39; contending for the arms of Achilles, xi. 544; contending with Philoctetes in 
shooting with the bow, viii. 219; secretly in Troy, iv. 242 ; in the Trojan horse, 
iv. 270 (comp. viii. 492; xi. 522); at the beginning of the return, iii. 130; and, 
lastly, going to the men who know not the use of salt, xi. 120. But nothing is said 
of Ulysses' acts in the Iliad : his punishment of Thersites; the horses of Rhesus; 
the battle over the body of Patroclus, &c. In like manner the Odyssey intentionally 
records different exploits and adventures of Agamemnon, Achilles, Menelaus, and 
Nestor, from those celebrated in the Iliad. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. C3 

without ever thinking that it might be better to distribute this enjoyment 
over the whole year, why should not the Greeks of earlier times have 
been able to listen to the Iliad and Odyssey, and, perhaps, other poems, 
at the same festival ? At a later date, indeed, when the rhapsodist was 
rivalled by the player on the lyre, the dithyrambie minstrel, and by 
many other kinds of poetry and music, these latter necessarily abridged 
the time allowed to the epic reciter; but in early times, when the epic 
style reigned without a competitor, it would have obtained an undivided 
attention. Let us beware of measuring, by our loose and desultory 
reading, the intension of mind with which a people enthusiastically 
devoted to such enjoyments*, hung with delight on the flowing strains 
of the minstrel. In short, there was a time (and the Iliad and Odyssey 
are the records of it) when the Greek people, not indeed at meals, but 
at festivals, and under the patronage of their hereditary princes, heard 
and enjoyed these and other less excellent poems, as they were intended 
to be heard and enjoyed, viz. as complete wholes. Whether they were, 
at this early period, ever recited for a prize, and in competition with 
others, is doubtful, though there is nothing improbable in the suppo- 
sition. But when the conflux of rhapsodists to the contests became per- 
petually greater ; when, at the same time, more weight was laid on the 
art of the reciter than on the beauty of the well-known poem which he 
recited ; and when, lastly, in addition to the rhapsodizing, a number of 
other musical and poetical performances claimed a place, then the rhap- 
sodists were permitted to repeat separate parts of poems, in which they 
hoped to excel ; and the Iliad and Odyssey (as they had not yet been 
reduced to writing) existed for a time only as scattered and unconnected 
fragments f. And we are still indebted to the regulator of the contest 
of rhapsodists at the Panathenaea (whether it was Solon or Pisistratus), 
for having compelled the rhapsodists to follow one another, according to 
the order of the poem J, and for having thus restored these great works, 
which were falling into fragments, to their pristine integrity. It is 
indeed true that some arbitrary additions may have been made to them 
at this period ; which, however, we can only hope to be able to distin- 
guish from the rest of the poem, by first coming to some general agree- 
ment as to the original form and subsequent destiny of the Homeric 
compositions. 

* Above, p. 30, note f f . 

f har-ratrfiivci, h-/i(>«/Avx, ff-xo^oibw aVopuia,. See the sure testimonies on this point in 
Wolf's Prolegomena, p. cxliii. 

\ ii vwoXi-^ius (or in Diog. Laert. \\ vvrofioXr,;) pu-^^^v. 



64 



HISTORY OF THE 



CHAPTER VI. 



$ 1. General character of the Cyclic poems.— § 2. The Destruction of Troy and .Ethi- 
opia of Arctinus of Miletus.— § 3. The little Iliad of Lesches.— § 4. The Cypria 
of Stasiuus.— § 5. The Nostoi of Agias of Troezen.— § 6. The Telegonia of Eu- 
gammon of Cyrene— § 7. Poems on the War against Thehes. 

§ 1. Homer's poems, as they became the foundation of all Grecian 
literature, are likewise the central point of the epic poetry of Greece. 
All that was most excellent in this line originated from them, and was 
connected with them in the way of completion or continuation ; so that 
by closely considering this relation, we arrive not only at a proper 
understanding of the subjects of these later epics, but even are able, 
in return, to throw some light upon the Homeric poems themselves, — 
the Iliad and Odyssey. This class of epic poets is called the Cyclic, 
from their constant endeavour to connect their poems with those of Ho- 
mer, so that the whole should form a great cycle. Hence also originated 
the custom of comprehending their poems almost collectively under the 
name of Homer *, their connexion with the Iliad and Odyssey being 
taken as a proof that the whole was one vast conception. More accurate 
accounts, however, assign almost all these poems to particular authors, 
who lived after the commencement of Olympiads, and therefore con- 
siderably later than Homer. Indeed, these poems, both in their cha- 
racter and their conception of the mythical events, are very different 
from the Iliad and Odyssey. These authors cannot even have been 
called Homerids, since a race of this name existed only in Chios, and 
not one of them is called a Chian. Nevertheless it is credible that 
they were Homeric rhapsodists by profession, to whom the constant 
recitation of the ancient Homeric poems would naturally suggest the 
notion of continuing them by essays of their own in a similar tone. 
Hence, too, it would be more likely to occur that these poems, when they 
were sung by the same rhapsodists, would gradually themselves 
acquire the name of Homeric epics. From a close comparison of the 
extracts and fragments of these poems, which we still possess, it is evi- 
dent that their authors had before them copies of the Iliad and Odyssey 
in their complete form, or, to speak more accurately, comprehending the 
same series of events as those current among the later Greeks and our- 
selves, and that they merely connected the action of their own poems 
with the beginning and end of these two epopees. But notwithstanding 
the close connexion which they made between their own productions and 
the Homeric poems, notwithstanding that they often built upon particular 
allusions in Homer, and formed from them long passages of their own 

* 0/ fiivrei eio%u7oi *«i toy KvkKov uvcKpipoviriv ih uvrev ("O^tfgav). Proclus, Vita Homeri. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 65 

poems (a fact which is particularly evident in the excerpt of the Cypria) ; 
still their manner of treating and viewing mythical subjects differs so 
widely from that of Homer, as of itself to be a sufficient proof that the 
Homeric poems were no longer in progress of development at the time 
of the Cyclic poets, but had, on the whole, attained a settled form, to 
which no addition of importance was afterwards made*. Otherwise, we 
could not fail to recognise the traces of a later age in the interpolated 
passages of the Homeric poems. 

§ 2. We commence with the poems which continued the Iliad. 
Arctinus of Miletus was confessedly a very ancient poet, nay, he is 
even termed a disciple of Homer ; the chronological accounts place him 
immediately after the commencement of the Olympiads. His poem, 
consisting of 9,100 versesf (about one-third less than the Iliad), opened 
with the arrival of the Amazons at Troy, which followed immediately 
after the death of Hector. There existed in antiquity one recension of 
the Iliad, which concluded as follows : — "Thus they performed the funeral 
rites of Hector ; then came the Amazon, the daughter of the valorous 
man-destroying Ares J." This, without doubt, was the cyclic edition of 
the Homeric poems, more than once mentioned by the ancient critics : 
in which they appear to have been connected with the rest of the cyclus, 
so as to form an unbroken series. The same order of events also appears 
in several works of ancient sculpture, in which on one side Andromache 
is represented as weeping over Hector's ashes, while, on the other, the 
female warriors are welcomed by the venerable Priam. The action of the 
epic of Arctinus was connected with the following principal events. Achilles 
kills Penthesilea, and then in a fit of anger puts to death Thersites, 
who had ridiculed him for his love for her. Upon this Memnon, the 
son of Eos, appears with his Ethiopians, and is slain by the son of 
Thetis after he himself has killed in battle Antilochus, the Patroclus of 
Arctinus. Achilles himself falls by the hand of Paris while pursuing 
the Trojans into the town. His mother rescues his body from the 
funeral pile, and carries him restored to life to Leuce, an island in the 
Black Sea, where the mariners believed that they saw his mighty form 
flitting in the dusk of evening. Ajax and Ulysses contend for his arms ; 
the defeat of Ajax causes his suicide §. Arctinus further related the his- 

* In these remarks we of course except the Catalogue of the Ships. See 
chap. v. § 9. 

f According to the inscription of the tahlet in the Museo Borgia (see Heeren 
Bihliothek der alten Literatur und Kunst, part iv. p. 61) where it is said * * * * 

'A£*tw]v vov MtXniriov xiyovtnv Wuv ovree. 8%. The plural ov-ra. refers to the two poems, 
according to the explanation in the text. 

* 'its oly ufttpitTOv TuQ/)v"E}C7ogo;' v,X6i £' ' Apu^uv 

"Agw; 6vya.Tn^ f*iya.XriTo^Oi uvogatyovoio. — Schol. Veil, ad II. xxiv. ult. V. * 

§ See Schol. Find. Isthm. iii. 58, who quotes for this event the ^Ethiopis, and 
Schol. II. xi. 515, who quotes for it the 'Ikwu ti^o-i; of Arctinus. I particularly men- 
tion this point ; since, from the account in the Chrestomathia of Proclus, it might 
he thought that Arctinus had omitted this circumstance. 

P 



66 HISTORY OF THE 

tory of the wooden horse, the careless security of the Trojans, and the de- 
struction of Laocoon, which induces jEneastoflee for safety to Ida before 
the impending destruction of the town*. The sack of Troy by the 
Greeks returning from Tenedos, and issuing from the Trojan horse, was 
described so as to display in a conspicuous manner the arrogance and 
mercilessness of the Greeks, and to occasion the resolution of Athene, 
already known from the Odyssey, to punish them in various ways on 
their return home. This last part, when divided from the preceding, 
was called the Destruction of Troy ('IXi'ov 7re/3o-ts) ; the former, com- 
prising the events up to the death of Achilles, the Aethiopis of Arc- 
tinus. 

§ 3. Lesches, or Lescheus, from Mytilene, or Pyrrha, in the island 
of Lesbos, was considerably later than Arctinus ; the best authorities 
concur in placing him in the time of Archilochus, or about Olymp. 
xviii. Hence the account which we find in ancient authors of a contest 
between Arctinus and Lesches can only mean that the later competed 
with the earlier poet in treating the same subjects. His poem, which 
was attributed by many to Homer, and, besides, to very different 
authors, was called the Little Iliad, and was clearly intended as a sup- 
plement to the great Iliad. We learn from Aristotle t that it comprised 
the events before the fall of Troy, the fate of Ajax, the exploits of Phi- 
loctetes, Neoptolemus, and Ulysses, which led to the taking of the town, 
as well as the account of the destruction of Troy itself: which statement 
is confirmed by numerous fragments. The last part of this (like the 
first part of the poem of Arctinus) was called the Destruction of Troy ; 
from which Pausanias makes several quotations, with reference to the 
sacking of Troy, and the partition and carrying away of the prisoners. 
It is evident from his citations that Lesches, in many important events 
(e. g. 9 the death of Priam, the end of the little Astyanax, and the fate of 
iEneas, whom he represents Neoptolemus as taking to Pharsalus), fol- 
lowed quite different traditions from Arctinus. The connexion of the 
several events was necessarily loose and superficial, and without any 
unity of subject. Hence, according to Aristotle, whilst the Iliad and 
Odyssey only furnished materials for one tragedy each, more than eight 
might be formed out of the Little Iliad ). Hence, also, the opening of 

* Quite differently from Virgil, who in other respects has in the second hook of 
the iEneid chiefly followed Arctinus. 

t Poet. c. 23, ad fin. ed. Bekker. (c. 38, ed. Tyrwhitt.) 

| Ten are mentioned by Aristotle, viz., "Orkuv Kauris, Qikexrvrvs, VliovroXtftof, 
EvpuTvkoi, Tlru%ii<£ (see Od. iv. 244), ActJiemvui, 'IXi'ov <rip<ris, 'AtotXovs, 'Sivuv, Tgauhs. 
Among these tragedies the subject of the Auxatvai is not apparent. The name of 
course means " Lacedaemonian women ;" who, as the attendants of Helen, formed the 
chorus. Helen played a chief part in the adventures of Ulysses as a spy in Troy: 
the subject of the Utu^uo, above mentioned. Or perhaps Helen was represented 
as the accomplice of the heroes in the wooden horse. See Od. iv. 271. Compare 
^neid. vi. 517. Of Sophocles' tragedy of this name only a few fragments are 
extant : Nos. 336—9, ed. Dindorf. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 67 

the poem, which promises so much, and has been censuied as arrogant, 
" I sing- of Ilion, and Dardania famous for its horses, on whose account 
the Greeks, the servants of Mars, suffered many evils*." 

Before proceeding any further I feel myself bound to justify the 
above account of the relation between Arctinus and Lesches, since 
Proclus, the well-known philosopher and grammarian, to whose Chres- 
tomathia we are indebted for the fullest account of the epic eyelet, 
represents it in a totally different point of view. Proclus gives us, as an 
abridgment of the Cyclic poets, a continuous narrative of the events 
of the Trojan war, in which one poet always precisely takes up 
another, often in the midst of a closely connected subject. Thus, ac- 
cording to Proclus, Arctinus continued the Homeric Iliad up to the 
contest for the arms of Achilles ; then Lesches relates the result of this 
contest, and the subsequent enterprises of the heroes against Troy until 
the introduction of the wooden horse within the walls ; at this point 
Arctinus resumes the thread of the narrative, and describes the issuing 
forth of the heroes inclosed in the wooden horse ; but he too breaks off 
in the midst of the history of the return of the Greeks at the point 
where Minerva devises a plan for their punishment : the fulfilment of 
this plan being related by Agias, in the poem called the Nostoi. In 
order to make such an interlacing of the different poems comprehensible, 
we must suppose the existence of an academy of poets, dividing their 
materials amongst each other upon a distinct understanding, and with 
the most minute precision. It is, however, altogether inconceivable 
that Arctinus should have twice suddenly broken off in the midst of 
actions, which the curiosity of his hearers could never have permitted 
him to leave unfinished, in order that, almost a century after, Lesches, 
and probably at a still later date Agias, might fill up the gaps and com- 
plete the narrative. Moreover, as the extant fragments of Arctinus and 
Lesches afford sufficient proof that they both sang of the events which, 
according to the abstract of Proclus, formed an hiatus in their poems, 
it is easy to perceive that his account was not drawn up from these 
poems according to their original forms, but from a selection made by 
some grammarian, who had put together a connected poetical descrip- 
tion of these events from the works of several Cyclic poets, in which no 
occurrence was repeated, but nothing of importance was omitted : and 
this indeed the expressions of Proclus himself appear to indicate J. 
In fact, the Cyclus in this sense included not only the epoch of the 
Trojan war (where the 'poems were mutually connected by means of 

* ' IXiov uiioa xa.) Aafiuviyv Iv-raXov, 

'H? <7ri(n ToXXa tuQov Aa.va.ot, faputfovris "A^jjaj. 
f This part of the Chrestomathia was first published iti the Gdttingen Bibliothek 
fiir alte Litteratur und Kunst, Part i, inedita, afterwards in Gaisford's Hephaestion, 
p. 378, seq., 472, seq., and elsewhere. 

% Ka) Ti^otrourai o Wikos xvxXog Ik "hm<pi(>uv toujtuv <ruwr\ygo6f*Lvo; p>i%£t *riS ««*«* 
/3a<re«; 'OW<rs«? <rri$ tig 'Ucckhv. — Proclus, ubi Slip. 

f2 



68 HISTORY OF THE 

their common reference to Homer), but the whole mythology, from the 
marriage of Heaven and Earth to the last adventures of Ulysses ; for 
which purpose use must have been made of poems totally distinct from 
each other, and of whose original connexion, either in their execution or 
design, no trace whatever is discoverable*. 

§ 4. The poem which in the Cyclus preceded the Iliad, and was 
clearly intended by its author himself for that purpose, was the Cypria, 
consisting of eleven books, which may be most safely ascribed to Sta- 
sinus of the island of Cyprus, who, however, according to the tradition, 
received it from Homer himself (transformed on that account into a 
Salaminian from Cyprus), as a portion on the marriage of his daughter. 
And yet the fundamental ideas of the Cypria are so un-Homeric, 
and contain so much of a rude attempt at philosophising on mytho- 
logy, which was altogether foreign to Homer, that Stasinus certainly 
cannot be considered as of an earlier date than Arctinus. The Cypria 
began with the prayer of the Earth to Zeus, to lessen the burdens of the 
race of man, already become too heavy ; and then' related how Zeus, 
with the view of humbling the pride of mankind, begot Helen upon 
the goddess Nemesis, and gave her to be educated by Leda. The promise 
by Venus of the woman whose beauty was to cause the destruction of 
heroes to the shepherd Paris, as a reward for the decision respecting the 
apple of discord, her abduction from Sparta during the absence of her 
husband Menelaus in Crete, and while her brothers, the Dioscuri, are 
slain in battle by the sons of Aphareus, were all related in conformity with 
the usual traditions, and the expedition of the heroes of Greece against 
Troy was derived from these events. The Greeks, however, according to 
the Cypria, twice set out from Aulis against Troy, having the first time 
been carried to Teuthrania in Mysia, a district ruled by Telephus, and 
in sailing away having been driven back by a storm ; at their second 
departure from Aulis the sacrifice of Iphigenia was related. The nine 
years' contest before Troy, and in its vicinity, did not occupy near so 
much space in the Cypria as the preparations for the war ; the full 
stream of tradition, as it gushes forth from a thousand springs in the 
Homeric poems, has even at this period dwindled down to narrow 
dimensions : the chief part w r as connected with the incidental mentions 
of earlier events in Homer ; as the attack of Achilles upon iEneas near 
the herds of cattle t, the killing of Troilus J, the selling of Lycaon to 
Lemnos§ ; Palamedes — the nobler counterpart of Ulysses — was the only 

* As an additional proof of a point which indeed is almost self-evident, it may 
be also mentioned that, according to Proclus, there were Jive, and afterwards two 
books of Arctinns in the epic cyclus: according to the Tabula Borgiana, however, the 
poems of Arctinus included 9,100 verses, which, according to the standard of the 
hooks in Homer, would at least give twelve books. 

f II. xx. 90, seq. 

I II. xxiv. 257. The more recent poetry combines the death of Troilus with the 
last events of Troy. § II. xxi. 35. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 69 

hero either unknown to or accidentally never mentioned by Homer. 
Achilles was throughout represented as the chief hero, created for the 
purpose of destroying- the race of man by manly strength, as Helen by 
female beauty; hence also these two beings, who otherwise could not 
have become personally known to each other, were brought together in 
a marvellous manner by Thetis and Amphitrite. As, however, the war, 
conducted in the manner above described, did not destroy a sufficient 
number of men, Zeus at last resolves, for the purpose of effectually 
granting the'prayer of the Earth, to stir up the strife between Achilles 
and Agamemnon, and thus to bring about all the great battles of the 
Iliad. Thus the Cypria referred altogether to the Iliad for the com- 
pletion of its own subject; and at the same time added to the motive 
supposed in the latter poem, the prayer of Thetis, a more general one, 
the prayer of the Earth, of which the Iliad knows nothing. In the 
Cypria a gloomy destiny hovers over the whole heroic world ; as in 
Hesiod* the Theban and Trojan war is conceived as a general war 
of extermination between the heroes. The main origin of this fatality 
is, moreover, the beauty of the woman, as in Hesiod's mythus of Pan- 
dora. The unwarlike Aphrodite, who in Homer is so little fitted for 
mingling in the combats of heroes, is here the conductor of the whole ; 
on this point the Cyprian poet may have been influenced by the im- 
pressions of his native island, where Aphrodite was honoured before all 
other deities. 

§ 5. Between the poems of Arctinus and Lesches and the Odyssey 
came the epic of AGiAsf the Troezenian, divided into five books, the 
Nostoi. A poem of this kind would naturally be called forth by the 
Odyssey, as the author in the very commencement supposes that all the 
other heroes, except Ulysses, had returned home from Troy. Even in 
Homer's time there existed songs on the subject of the homeward 
voyages of the heroes ; but these scattered lays naturally fell into ob- 
livion upon the appearance of Agias's poem, which was composed with 
almost Homeric skill, and all the intimations to be found in Homer were 
carefully made use of, and adopted as the outlines of the action J. Agias 
began his poem with describing how Athene executed her plan of ven- 
geance, by exciting a quarrel between the Atridae themselves, which pre- 
vented the joint return of the two princes. The adventures of the Atridae 
furnished the main subject of the poem§. In the first place the wan- 
derings of Menelaus, who first left the Trojan coast, were narrated 
almost up to his late arrival at home ; then Agamemnon, who did not 
sail till afterwards, was conducted by a direct course to his native land : 

* Hesiod. Op. et D. 1G0, seq. 

f , \yia.; is the correct form of his name, in Ionic 'Hyixs -, At/yias is a corruption. 
J See particularly Od. iii. 135. 

§ Hence, probably, the same poem is more than once in Athenaeus called h ruv 
'Arpu^wv %x4oho$. 



70 HISTORY OF THE 

and his murder and the other fortunes of his family were described up 
to the period when Menelaus arrives after the vengeance of Orestes had 
been consummated*; with which event the poem properly concluded. 
Artfully interwoven with the above narrative were the voyages and 
wandering's of the other heroes, Diomed, Nestor, Calchas, Leonteus 
and Polypoetes, Neoptolemus, and the death of the Locrian Ajax on 
the Capherian rocks, so that the whole formed a connected picture of 
the Achaean heroes at variance with each other, hastening homewards by 
different routes, but almost universally contending with misfortunes and 
difficulties. Ulysses ajpne was left for the Odysseyf. 

§ 6. The continuation of the Odyssey was the Telegonia, of which poem 
only two books were introduced into the collection used by ProclusJ. 
Eugammon of Cyrene, who did not live before the 53d Olympiad, 
is named as the author. The Telegonia opened with the burial of the 
suitors by their kinsmen. The want of this part renders the Odyssey 
incomplete as a narrative; although, for the internal unity, it is un- 
necessary, since the suitors are no longer a subject of interest after 
Ulysses had rid his house of them. The poem then related a voyage 
of Ulysses to Polyxenus at Elis, the motives for which are not suf- 
ficiently known to us ; and afterwards the completion of the sacrifices 
offered by Tiresias; upon which Ulysses (in all probability incompliance 
with the prophecy of Tiresias, in order to reach the country where the 
inhabitants were neither acquainted with the sea nor with salt, the pro- 
duct of the sea) goes to Thesprotia, and there rules victoriously and 
happily, till he returns a second time to Ithaca, where, not being re- 
cognised, he is slain by Telegonus, his son by Circe, who had come to 
seek his father. 

§ 7. With the exception of the events of the Trojan war, and the return 
of the Greeks, nothing was so closely connected with the Iliad and 
Odyssey as the War of the Arguses against Thebes ; since many of the 
principal heroes of Greece, particularly Diomed and Sthenelus, were 

* SeeOd. iii. 311 j iv. 547. 

f In what part of the Nostoi the Nekyia, or description of the infernal regions, 
which belonged to it, was introduced, we are not indeed informed ; hut there can 
scarcely be any doubt that it was connected with the funeral of Tiresias, which 
Calchas, in the Nostoi, celebrated ai Colophon. Tiresias, in the Odyssey, is the 
only shade in the infernal regions who is endowed with memory and understanding, 
for whose sake Ulysses ventures as far as the entrance of Hades: would not then 
the poet, whose object it was to make his work an introduction to the Odyssey, have 
seized this opportunity to introduce the spirit of the seer into the realm of shades, 
and by his reception by Hades and Persephone to explain the privileges which, 
according to the Odyssey, he there enjoys ? The questioning of Tiresias invites to 
a preparatory explanation more perhaps than any other part of the Odyssey, since, 
taken by itself, it has something enigmatical. 

+ These two books were evidently only an epitome of the poem; for even all that 
Proclus states from them has scarcely sufficient space : to say nothing of the poem 
on the Thesprotians in a mystic tone, which Clemens of Alexandria (Strom, vi. 277) 
attributes to Eugammon, and which was manifestly in its original form a part of the 
Telegonia. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 71 

themselves amongst the conquerors of Thebes, and their fathers before 
them, a bolder and wilder race, had fought on the same spot, in a con- 
test which, although unattended with victory, was still far from inglorious. 
Hence also reputed Homeric poems on the subject of this war were 
extant, which perhaps really bore a great affinity to the Homeric time 
and school. For we do not find, as in the other poems of the cycle, 
the names of one or several later poets placed in connexion with these 
compositions, but they are either attributed to Homer, as the earlier 
Greeks in general appear to have done*, or, if the authorship of Homer 
is doubted, they are -usually attributed to no author at all. The Thebais, 
which consisted of seven books, or 5,600 verses, originated from Argos, 
which was also considered by Homer as the centre of the Grecian power : 
it commenced " Sing, O Muse, the thirsty Argos, where the princes 
. . . .f" Here dwelt Adrastus, to whom Poly nices, the banished son of 
(Edipus, fled, and found with him a reception. The poet then took occa- 
sion to enter upon the cause of the banishment of Polynices, and related 
the fate of GEdipus and his curse twice pronounced against his sons. 
Amphiraus was represented as a wise counsellor to Adrastus, and in 
opposition to Polynices and Tydeus, the heroes eager for battle. 
Eriphyle was the Helen of this war ; the seductive woman who induced 
her otherwise prudent husband to rush, conscious of his doom, to meet 
his unhappy fate J. The insolence of the Argive chiefs was probably 
represented as the principal cause of their destruction ; Homer in the 
Iliad described it as the crime and curse of these heroes§, and iEschylus 
portrays it in characteristic emblems and words. Adrastus is only saved 
by his horse Areion, a supernatural being ; and a prophecy respecting 
the Epigoni concluded the whole. 

The Epigoni was so far a second part of the Thebais that it was some- 
times comprehended under the same name ||, though it might also be 
considered as distinct. It began with an allusion to the first heroic 
expedition, " Now, O Muses, let us commence the exploits of the later 
men^ ;" and related the much less notorious actions of the sons of the 
heroes, according to all probability under the auspices of the same 
Adrastus** who was destined to conquer Thebes, if his army should be 

* In Pausan. ix. 9, 3. KakkTvos is certainly the right reading. This ancient 
elegiac poet therefore, about the 20th Olympiad, quoted the Thebaid as Homeric. 
The Epigoni was still commonly ascribed to Homer in the time of Herodotus, iv„ 32. 

•f* " Agyos eLiibt ha Trokvhtytov, tv6a clvx/cns. 

X Hence the entire poem is in Pseudo-Herod. Vit. Horn. c. 9, called ' ApQiagtco 
V&katrln is e*)(Zas, in Suidas ' ApQia^oiov iffastafc, 

§ 11. v. 409. 

|| Thus the scholiast on Apoll. Rhod. i. 308, in the account of Manto, cites the 
Thebaid for the Epigoni. 

^[ N?v avff o-rkoripwv avh^uv a^A>fji.i6a.^ Mouiroct. 

** See Pindar, Pyth. viii. 48. It can be shown that Pindar, in his mentions of 
this fable, always keeps near to the Thebaid. 



72 HISTORY OF THE 

freer from guilt, and thereby become more worthy of glory. Diomed 
and Sthenelus, the sons of the wild Tydeus and the reckless Capaneus, 
equalled their fathers in] power, while they surpassed them in modera- 
tion and respect for the gods. 

Even these few, but authentic accounts exhibit glorious materials for 
genuine poetry ; and they were treated in a style which had not de- 
generated from Homer; the only difference being that an exalted 
heroic life was not, as in the Iliad and Odyssey, exhibited in one great 
action, and as accomplishing its appointed purpose : but a longer series 
of events was developed before the listeners, externally connected by 
their reference to one enterprise, and internally by means of certain 
general moral reflections and mythico-philosophical ideas. 



CHAPTER VII. 

§ 1. General character of the Homeric Hymns, or Proaemia. — § 2. Occasions on 
which they were sung : Poets by whom, and times at which, they were composed. 
— § 3. Hymn to the Delian Apollo. — § 4. Hymn to the Pythian Apollo.— § 5. 
Hymn to Hermes. — § 6. Hymn to Aphrodite — § 7. Hymn to Demeter. 

§ 1. One essential part of the epic style of poetry consisted of hymns. 
Those hymns which were recited by the epic poets, and which we com- 
prehend under the name of Homeric, were called by the ancients 
proosmia, that is preludes, or overtures. They evidently in part owed 
this name to their having served the rhapsodists as introductory strains 
for their recitations : a purpose to which the final verses often clearly 
refer ; as, " Beginning with thee I will now sing the race of the demi- 
gods, or the exploits of the heroes, which the poets are wont to cele- 
brate*." But the longer hymns of this class could hardly have served 
such a purpose ; as they sometimes are equal in extent to the rhapsodies 
into which the grammarians divided the Iliad and Odyssey, and they 
even contain very detailed narratives of particular legends, which are 
sufficient to excite an independent interest. These must be considered 
as preludes to a whole series of epic recitations, in other words, as intro- 
ductions to an entire contest of rhapsodists ; making, as it were, the 
transition from the preceding festival of the gods, with its sacrifices, 
prayers, and sacred chaunts, to the subsequent competition of the 
singers of heroic poetry. The manner in which it was necessary to 
shorten one of these long hymns, in order to make it serve as a 
procemium of a single poem, or part of a poem, may be seen from the 

* See, for example, Hymn xxxi. 18. ex it'io V agld/t&vos *Xwrm pigoTuv y'zvo; 
avSg<wv hpiB'M'J, and xxxii. 18. <rio V ctf>%of/,ivo; xkia Qairuv a.<ro[JMi fifiifiiuv uv xXtiotw' 
igyfAur aoiho't. A prayer for victory also sometimes occurs : x ""' il-'xofcXitpa.oi, y/.v 
xv/aiiXix'., $o; V iv ayuvi v'ihw rZh <pi^i<r6ai, Hymn vi. 19. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 73 

18th of the Homeric' hymns, the short one to Hermes, which has been 
abridged from the long one for this purpose. 

With the actual ceremonies of the divine worship these hymns had 
evidently no immediate connexion. Unlike the lyric and choral songs, 
they were sung' neither on the procession to the temple (rapr//), nor at 
the sacrifice (0vo-ta), nor at the libation (<nrovcri), with which the 
public prayers for the people were usually connected ; they had only a 
general reference to the god as patron of a festival, to which a contest 
of rhapsodists or poets had been appended. One hymn alone, the 
eighth to Ares, is not a procemium, but a prayer to the god : in this, 
however, the entire tone, the numerous invocations and epithets, are so 
different from the Homeric, that this hymn has been with reason re- 
ferred to a much later period, and has been classed with the Orphic 
compositions*. 

§ 2. But although these procemia were not immediately connected 
with the service of the gods, and although a poet might have prefixed 
an invocation of this kind to an epic composition recited by him alone, 
without a rival, in any meeting of idle persons f, yet we may perceive 
from them how many and different sacred festivals in Greece were at- 
tended by rhapsodists. Thus it is quite clear that the two hymns to 
Apollo were sung, the one at the festival of the nativity of the god in 
the island of Delos, the other at that of the slaying of the dragon at Pytho ; 
that the hymn to Demeter was recited at theEleusinia, where musical con- 
tests were also customary ; and that contests of rhapsodists were connected 
with the festivals of Aphrodite J, particularly at Salamis in Cyprus§, from 
which island we have also seen a considerable epic poem proceed. 
The short hymn to Artemis, which describes her wanderings from the 
river Meles at Smyrna to the island of Claros (where her brother Apollo 
awaits her) ||, appears also to have been recited at a musical contest, 
which was connected with the festival of these two deities in the re- 
nowned sanctuary of Claros, near Colophon. Festivals in honour of the 
Magna Mater of Phrygia may have likewise been celebrated in the 
towns of Asia Minor, also accompanied with contests of rhapsodists. 

That these procemia were composed by rhapsodists of Asia Minor, 
nearly the same as those who were concerned in the Homeric cycle, 
and not by minstrels of the school of Hesiod, is proved by the fact that 
we find among them no hymn to the Muses, with whom the poet of 

* Ares is in this hymn, viii. 7, 10, also considered as the planet of the same 
name : the hymn, therefore, belongs to a time when Chaldsean astrology had been 
diffused in Greece. The contest for which the aid of Ares is implored is a purely 
mental one, with the passions, and the hymn is in fact philosophical rather than 
Orphic. 

f For example, in a k'ur%n, a house of public resort, where strangers found an 
abode. Homer, according to Pseudo -Herodotus, sang many poetical pieces in 
places of this description. 

I Hymn vi. 19. § Hymn x. 4. Comp. ch. 6. § 4. j| Hymn ix. 3, sey. 



74 HISTORY OP THE 

the Theogony, as he himself says, began and ended his strains*. One 
short hymn however, formed of verses borrowed from the Theogony, has 
found its way into this miscellaneous collectionf. By a similar argu- 
ment we may refute the opinion that these hymns were exclusively the 
work of the Homerids, that is, the house of Chios : these, as we know 
from the testimony of Pindar, were accustomed to commence with an 
invocation to Zeus ; while our collection only contains one very small 
and unimportant procemium to this god {, 

Whether any of the preludes which Terpander, the Lesbian poet and 
musician, employed in his musical recitation of Homer § have been 
preserved in the present collection, must remain a doubtful question : 
it seems however probable that those hymns, composed for an accom- 
paniment of the cithara, must have had a different tone and character. 

Moreover, these hymns exhibit such a diversity of language and 
poetical tone, that in all probability they contain fragments from every 
century between the time of Homer and the Persian war. Several, as 
for instance that to the Dioscuri, show the transition to the Orphic 
poetry, and several refer to local worships, which are entirely un- 
known to us, as the one to Selene, which celebrates her daughter by 
Zeus, the goddess Pandia, shining forth amongst the immortals ; of 
whom we can now only conjecture that the Athenian festival of Pandia 
was dedicated to her. 

§ 3. We will now endeavour to illustrate these general remarks by 
some special explanations of the five longer hymns. The hymn to the 
D elian Apollo is (as has been already stated) || ascribed by Thucydides 
to Homer himself ; and is, doubtless, the production of a Homerid of 
Chios, who, at the end of the poem, calls himself the blind poet who 
lived on the rocky Chios. But the notion that this poet was Cinaethus, 
who did not live till the 69th Olympiad ^1, appears only to have 
originated from the circumstance that he was the most celebrated of 
the Homerids. If any one of these hymns comes near to the age of 
Homer, it is this one ; and it is much to be lamented that a large 
portion of it has been lost**, which contained the beginning of the 
narration, the true ground of the wanderings of Latona. We can only 
conjecture that this was the announcement, probably made by Here, 
that Latona would produce a terrible and mighty son : of which 
a contradiction is meant to be implied in Apollo's first words, where he 
calls the cithara his favourite instrument, as well as the bow, and 

* Theogon. 48. Endings of this kind, called by the grammarians 'upv/tvut, are 
also mentioned in the Homeric hymns, xxi. 4, and xxxiv. 18, and the short song, 
Hymn xxi. is probably one of them. Comp. Theognis, v. i. (925), Apollon. Rhod. 
Arg. iv. 1774. 

f See Hymn xxv. and Theog. 94 — 7. X Hymn xxiii. 

§ Plutarch de Musica, c. 4, 6 ; and above, chap. iv. § 3 (p. 34) . 

|| Above, chap. v. § 1 (p. 42). 

% Schol. Pind. Nem. ii. 1. ** Hymn i. 30. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 75 

declares his chief office to be the promulgation of the councils of Zeus*. 
The entire fable of the birth of Apollo is treated so as to give great honour 
to the island of Delos, which alone takes pity on Latona, and dares to 
offer her an asylum ; the fittest subject of a hymn for the joyful spring 
festival, to which the Ionians flocked together from far and wide on 
their pilgrimage to the holy island. 

§ 4. The hymn to the Pythian Apollo is a most interesting record 
of the ancient mythus of Apollo in the district of Pytho. It belongs 
to a time when the Pythian sanctuary was still in the territory of Crissa : 
of the hostility between the Pythian priests and the Crissaeans, which 
afterwards led to the war of the Amphictyons against the city of 
Crissa (in Olymp. 47.), there is no trace ; a passage of the hymn also 
shows that horse-races f had not as yet been introduced at the Pythian 
games, which began immediately after the Crissaean war : the ancient 
Pythian contests had been confined to music. The following is the 
connexion of this hymn. Apollo descends from Olympus in order to 
found a temple for himself; and while he is seeking a site for it in 
Boeotia, he is recommended by a water-goddess, Tilphussa or Delphussa, 
to place it in the territory of Crissa in the ravine of Parnassus : her ad- 
vice being prompted by the malicious hope that a dangerous seipent, 
which abode there, would destroy the youthful god. Apollo accepts 
her counsel, but frustrates her intent: he founds his temple in this 
solitary glen, slays the dragon, and then punishes Tilphussa by stopping 
up her fountain J. Apollo then procures priests for the new sanctuary, 
Cretan men, whom he, in the form of a dolphin, brings to Crissa, and 
consecrates as the sacrificers and guardians of his sanctuary. 

§ 5. The hymn to Hermes has a character very different from the 
others; which is the reason why modern critics have taken greater 
liberties with it in the rejection of verses supposed to be spurious. With 
that lively simplicity which gives an air of credibility to the most 
marvellous incidents, it relates how Hermes, begotten by Zeus in 
secret, is able, when only a new-born child, to leave the cradle in 
which his mother believed him to be safely concealed, in order to steal 
Apollo's cattle from the pastures of the gods in Pieria. The miraculous 
child succeeds in driving them away, using various contrivances for con- 
cealing his traces, to a grotto near Pylos, and slays them there, with all 
the skill of the most experienced slaughterer of victims. At the same time 
he had made the first lyre out of a tortoise which had fallen in his way on 
his first going out ; and with this he pacifies Apollo, who had at length, 

Xpriffto I' avfyio<roi<ri A/05 vn^i^rioc fiovXnv. — Hymn. Del. Ap. 131 — 2. 

f Hymn ii. 84, 199, where the noise of horses and chariots is given as a reason 
why the place is not fitted for a temple of Apollo. 

\ It is not necessary to the right comprehension of this hymn to explain the 
obscurer connexion of this mythus with the worship of a Demeter Tilphosseea, or 
Erinnys, hostile to Apollo. 



76 history or the 

by means of his power of divination, succeeded in discovering- the thief; 
so that the two sons of Zeus form at the end the closest intimacy, after an 
interchange of their respective gifts. This story is narrated in a light and 
pointed style, the poet seems to aim at rapid transitions, and especially at 
the beginning he indicates the marvellous exploits of Hermes in an enig- 
matic manner ; thus he says that " Hermes, by finding a tortoise, had 
gained unspeakable wealth : he had in truth known how to make the 
tortoise musical.*" This style is evidently far removed from the genuine 
Homeric tone ; although some instances of this arch simplicity occur 
both in the Iliad and Odyssey, and the story of the loves of Ares and 
Aphrodite, in the Odyssey, appears to belong to nearly the same class of 
compositions as this hymn. But a considerably later age is indicated 
by the circumstance that the lyre or the cithara — for the poet treats 
these two instruments as identical, though distinguished in more precise 
language — is described as having been at the very first provided with 
seven strings t ; yet the words of Terpander are still extant in which 
he boasts of having introduced the seven- stringed cithara in the 
place of the four-stringed J. Hence it is plain that this poem could not 
have been composed till some time after the 30th Olympiad, perhaps 
even by a poet of the Lesbian school, which had at that time spread to 
Peloponnesus§. 

§ 6. The hymn to Aphrodite relates how this goddess (who sub- 
jects all the gods to her power, three only excepted) is, according to 
the will of Zeus himself, vanquished by love for Anchises of Troy, and 
meets him in the form of a Phrygian princess by the herds on Mount 
Ida. At her departure she appears to him in divine majesty, and an- 
nounces to him the birth of a son, named iEneas, who will come to 
reign himself, and after him his family, over the Trojans ||. It is an 
obvious conjecture that this hymn (the tone and expression of which 
have much of the genuine Homer) was sung in honour of princes of 
the family of iEneas, in some town of the range of Ida, where the same 
line continued to reign even until the Peloponnesian war. 

§ 7. The hymn to Demeter is chiefly intended to celebrate the 
sojourning of this goddess among the Eleusinians. Demeter is seeking 
for her daughter, who has been carried away by Hades, until she learns 
from the god of the sun that the god of the infernal regions is the 
ravisher. She then dwells among the Eleusinians, who have hospitably 
received her, as the old attendant of Demophoon, until her divinity 
becomes evident ; upon which the Eleusinians build her a temple. In 
this she conceals herself as a wrathful deity, and withholds her gifts from 

* Hymn iii. v. 24, 25, &c. f v. 51. 

+ Euclides Introduct. Harmon, in Meibomius, Script. Mus. p. 19. 

§ We know that the Lesbian lyric poet Alcaeus treated the mythus of the birth of 
Hermes and the robbery of the cattle in a very similar manner, but of course iu a 
lyric form. 

|| Hymn iv. 196, seq. Compare Iliad, xx. 307. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 77 

mankind, until Zeus brings about an agreement that Cora shall be 
restored to her for two-thirds of the year, and shall only remain one- 
third of the year with Hades*. United again with her daughter, she 
instructs her hosts, the Eleusinians, in return for their hospitality, in her 
sacred orgies. 

Even if this hymn did not directly invite persons to the celebration of 
the Eleusinia, and to a participation in its initiatory rites, by calling 
those blessed who had seen them, and announcing an unhappy lot in 
the infernal regions to those who had taken no part in them ; yet we 
could not fail to recognise the hand of an Attic bard, well versed in the 
festival and its ceremonies, even in many expressions which have an 
Attic and local colour. The ancient sacred legend of the Eleusinians 
lies here before us in its pure and unadulterated form ; so far as it can 
be clothed with an epic garb in a manner agreeable to a refined taste. 
We may hence infer the value of this hymn (which was not discovered 
till the last century, and of which a part is lost) for the history of the 
Greek religion. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

y 
6 1. Circumstances of Hesiod's Life, and general character of his Poetry. — § 2. 
The Works and Days', the Poem on Divination, and the Lessons of Chiron. — 
§ 3. The Theogony.— § 4. The Great Eoiae, the Catalogues of Women, the Me- 
lampodia, the .^Egimius. — § 5. The Marriage of Ceyx, the Epithalamium of 
Peleus and Thetis, the Descent of Theseus and Pirithous into Hell, the Shield of 
Hercules. 

§ 1. While the fairest growth of the Grecian heroic poetry was 
nourishing under favourable circumstances upon the coast of Asia 
Minor in the iEolic and Ionic colonies, the mother -country of Greece, 
and especially Bceotia, to which we are now to direct our attention, were 
not so happily situated. In that country, already thickly peopled with 
Greek tribes, and divided into numerous small states, the migrations 
with which the heroic age of Greece terminated necessarily produced a 
state of lasting confusion and strife, sometimes even reaching into the 
interior of single families. It was only on the coast of Asia Minor that 
the conquerors could find a wide and open field for their enterprises ; 
this country was still for the most part virgin soil to the Greek settlers, 
and its native inhabitants of barbarous descent offered no very obstinate 
resistance to the colonists. Hence likewise it came to pass that of the 
iEolic Boeotians, who after the Trojan war emigrated from Thessaliotis, 
and obtained the sovereignty of Bceotia, a considerable number imme- 

* This depends on the Athenian festival cycle. At the Thesmophoria, the 
festival of sowing, Cora is supposed to descend beneath the earth ; on the Anthes- 
teria, the festival of the first bloom of spring, exactly four months afterwards, she 
is supposed to reascend from the infernal regions. 



78 HISTORY OP THE 

diately quitted this narrow territory, and joined the Aehaeans, who, just 
at this time, having been driven from Peloponnesus, were sailing to 
Lesbos, Tenedos, and the opposite shores of Asia Minor, there to found 
the colonies in which the name of iEolians subsequently preponderated 
over that of Achseans, and became the collective denomination. As 
new cities and states rose up and flourished in these regions of Asia 
Minor, which were moreover founded and governed by descendants of 
the most renowned princes of the heroic age, a free scope was given 
to the genius of poetry, and a bright and poetical view of man's destiny 
was naturally produced. But in Boeotia a comparison of the present 
with the past gave rise to a different feeling. In the place of the races 
celebrated in numerous legends, the Cadmeans and Minyans, who were 
the early occupants of Thebes and Orchomenos, had succeeded the 
iEolic Boeotians, whose native mythology appears meagre and scanty 
as compared with that of the other tribes. It is true that the Homeric 
bards allowed themselves to be so far influenced by the impressions of 
the present as to introduce the heroes of these Boeotians, and not the 
Cadmeans, as taking a part in the expedition against Troy. But how 
little of real individual character and of poetic truth is there in Peneleus 
and Leitus, when compared with the leaders of the Achaean bands from 
Peloponnesus and Thessaly ! The events of Greek history have, though 
not always, yet in most cases, verified the promises of their early le- 
gends ; and thus we find the Boeotians always remaining a vigorous, 
hardy race, whose mind can never soar far above the range of bodily 
existence, and whose cares are for the most part limited to the supply of 
their immediate wants — equally removed from the proud aspirings of 
the Doric spirit, which subjected all things within its reach to the influ- 
ence of certain deeply implanted notions, and from the liveliness and 
fine susceptibility of the Ionic character, which received all impressions 
with a fond and impassioned interest. But, even in this torpid and ob- 
scure condition of Boeotian existence, some stars of the first magnitude 
appear, as brilliant in politics as in art — Pindar, Epaminondas, and 
before them Hesiod, with the other distinguished poets who wrote under 
his name. 

But Hesiod, although a poet of very considerable power, was yet 
a true child of his nation and his times. His poetry is a faithful 
transcript of the whole condition of Boeotian life; and we may, on the 
other hand, complete our notions of Boeotian life from his poetry. If, 
before we proceed to examine each separate poem in detail, we first 
state our general impression of the whole, and compare it with that 
which we receive from the Homeric poems, we shall find throughout the 
writings of Hesiod (as well in the complete ones as in those which we 
can only judge by fragments) that we miss the powerful sway of a 
youthful fancy, which in every part of the poems of Homer sheds an 
expression of bright and inexhaustible enjoyment, which lights up the 



LITERATURE OP A.NCIENT GREECE. 79 

sublime images of a heroic age, and moulds them into forms of sur- 
passing beauty. That abandonment of the thoughts, with heartfelt 
joy and satisfaction, to a flow of poetical images, such as came crowding 
on the mind of Homer — how different is this from the manner of Hesiod ! 
His poetry appears to struggle to emerge out of the narrow bounds of 
common life, which he strives to ennoble and to render more endurable. 
Regarding with a melancholy feeling the destiny of the human race, 
and the corruption of a social condition which has destroyed all serene 
enjoyment, the poet seeks either to disseminate knowledge by which 
life may be improved, or to diffuse certain religious notions as to the 
influence of a superior destiny, which may tend to produce a patient 
resignation to its inevitable evils. Atone time he gives us lessons of civil 
and domestic wisdom, whereby order may be restored to a disturbed com- 
monwealth or an ill regulated household ; at another, he seeks to reduce 
the bewildering and endless variety of stories about the gods to a 
connected system, in which each deity has his appointed place. Then 
again the poet of this school seeks to distribute the heroic legends 
into large masses ; and, by finding certain links which bind them all 
together, to make them more clear and comprehensible. Nowhere does 
the poetry appear as the sole aim of the poet's mind, to which he de- 
votes himself without reserve, and to which all his thoughts are directed. 
Practical interests are, in a certain sense, everywhere intermixed. It 
cannot be denied that the poetry, as such, must thus lose much of 
its peculiar merit ; but this loss is, to a certain extent, compensated by 
the beneficent and useful tendency of the composition. 

This view of the poetry of Hesiod agrees entirely with the description 
which he has given of the manner of his first being called to the office 
of a poet. The account of this in the introduction to the Theogony 
(v. 1 — 35) must be a very ancient tradition, as it is also alluded to in 
the Works and Days (v. 659). The Muses, whose dwelling, according 
to the commonly received belief of the Greeks, was Olympus in Pieria, 
are yet accustomed (so says the Boeotian poet) to visit Helicon, which 
was also sacred to them. Then, having bathed in one of their holy 
springs, and having led their dances upon the top of Helicon, they go at 
night through the adjacent country, singing the great gods of Olympus, as 
well as the primitive deities of the universe. In one of these excursions 
they encountered Hesiod, who was watching his flocks by night in a 
valley at the foot of Helicon. Here they bestowed upon him the gift of 
poetry, having first addressed him in these words : " Ye country shep- 
herds, worthless wretches, mere slaves of the belly ! although we often 
tell falsehoods and pretend that they are true, yet we can tell truth when 
it pleases us." 

After these words, the Muses immediately consecrated Hesiod to their 
service by offering him a laurel branch, which the Boeotian minstrels 
always carried in their hand during the recitation of poetry. There is 



M HISTORY OF THE 

something very remarkable in this address of the Muses. In the first 
place, it represents poetical genius as a free gift of the Muses, imparted to 
a rough, unlettered man, and awakening him from his brutish condition 
to a better life. Secondly, this gift of the Muses is to be dedicated to 
the diffusion of truth ; by which the poet means to indicate the serious 
object and character of his theogonic and ethical poetry ; not without an 
implied censure of other poems which admitted of an easier and freer 
play of fancy. 

But, beautiful and significant as this story is, it is clear that the poetry 
of Hesiod can in nowise be regarded as the product of an inspiration 
which comes like a divine gift from above; it must have been connected 
both with earlier and with contemporary forms of epic composition. We 
have seen that the worship of the Muses was of old standing in these 
districts, whither it had been brought by the Pierian tribes from the 
neighbourhood of Olympus ; and with this worship the practice of music 
and poetry was most closely connected*. This poetry consisted chiefly 
of songs and hymns to the gods, for which Bceotia, so rich in ancient 
temples, symbolical rites of worship, and festival ceremonies, offered 
frequent opportunities. 

Ascra itself, according to epic poems quoted by Pausanias, was 
founded by the Aloids, who were Pierian heroes, and first sacrificed to 
the Muses upon mount Helicon. That Hesiod dwelt at Ascra rests upon 
his own testimony in the Works and Days (v. 640) ; and this statement 
is confirmed in a remarkable manner by other historical accounts, for 
which we are indebted to the Boeotian writer, Plutarch. Ascra had, at 
an early period, been destroyed by the neighbouring and powerful race 
of Thespians, and the Orchomenians had received the fugitive Ascrseans 
into their city : the oracle then commanded that the bones of Hesiod 
should be transferred to Orchomenus, and, when what were held to be 
the remains of the poet were discovered, a monument was erected to 
him at Orchomenus, upon which was written an inscription, composed by 
the Boeotian epic poet Chersias, describing him as the wisest of all poets. 

On the other hand, the intercourse which subsisted between the 
Boeotians and their kinsmen on the iEolic coast of Asia Minor, and the 
flight which poetry had taken in those countries, probably contributed 
to stimulate the Boeotian poets to new productions. There is no reason 
to doubt the testimony of the author of the Works and Days (v. 636), 
that his father came from Cyme in iEolis to Ascra : the motive which 
brought him thither was doubtless the recollection of the ancient affinity 
between the iEolic settlers and this race of the mother- country ; a recol- 
lection which was still alive at the time of the Peloponnesian war f . 
The father of the poet is not stated to be a Cymaean bard ; but is de- 
scribed as a mariner, who, after repeated voyages from Cyme, had at 
length taken up his abode at Ascra ; yet it must have been by settlers 
* Above, chap. iii. o 8, 9. t See Thucyd. iii. 2; vii. 57; viii. 100. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT QRXECE. M 

such as this that the fame of the heroic poetry, which at that time was 
flourishing inthe colonies, must have been spread over the mother-country. 
The ancients have eagerly seized upon this point of union in the two 
schools of poetry, iu order to prove that a near relationship existed 
between Homer and Hesiod. The logographers (or historians before 
Herodotus) — as Ilellanicus, Pherecydes, and Damastes — have combined 
various names handed down by tradition into comprehensive genealogies, 
in which it appears that the two poets were descended from a common 
ancestor : for example, that Apellis (also called Apelles, or Apellaeus) 
had two sons — Maeon, the supposed father of Homer, and Dius, who, 
according to an ancient but justly rejected interpretation of a verse in 
the Works and Days, was made the father of Hesiod*. 

But it is not our intention to support the opinion that the poetry of 
Hesiod was merely an offset from the Homeric stock transplanted to 
Bceotia, or that it is indebted to the Homeric poems either for its dialect, 
versification, or character of style. On the contrary, the most generally re- 
ceived opinion of antiquity assigns Hesiod and Homer to the same period ; 
thus Herodotus makes them both about four centuries earlier than his own 
timef • in such cases, too, Hesiod is commonly named before Homer, as, 
for instance, in this passage of Herodotus. As far as we know, it was first 
maintained by Xenophanes of Colophon J that Hesiod was later than 
Homer ; on the other hand, Ephorus, the historian of Cyme, and many 
others, have endeavoured to prove the higher antiquity of Hesiod. At 
any rate, therefore, the Greeks of those times did not consider that 
Homer had formed the epic language in Ionia, and that Hesiod had 
borrowed it, and only transferred it to other subjects. They must 
have entertained the opinion (which has been confirmed by the re- 
searches of our own time), that this epic dialect had already become the 
language of refinement and poetry in the mother-country before the 
colonies of Asia Minor were founded. Moreover, this dialect is only 
identical in the two schools of poetry so far as its general features are 
concerned. Many differences occur in particular points : and it can be 
proved that this ancient poetical language among the Boeotian tribe 
adopted many features of the native dialect, which was an JEolism 
approaching nearly to the Doric §. Neither does it appear that the 
phrases, epithets, and proverbial expressions common to both poets were 

* V. 299. 'Epycc&u, n't£<rn, ATov yivos- f ii. 53. 

I In Gellius, Noct. Att. iii. 17. Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic school of 
philosophy, who flourished about the 70th Olympiad, was also an epic poet, and 
may perhaps, in his *T<<ny KoXofuvo;, have found many opportunities of speaking of 
Homer, whom the Colophonians claimed as a countryman. See above, p. 43 
(chap. v. § 2). ' l 

§ Thus Hesiod often shortens the ending u; in the accusative plural of the first 
declension, like Alcman, Stesichorus, and Kpicharmus : it has indeed been observed 
that it only occurs long where the syllable is in the arsis, or where it is lengthened 
by position. On the whole, there is in Hesiod a greater tendency to shorter, ofteu 
to contracted forms ; while Homer's ear appears to have found neculiar delight in 
the multiplication of vowel syllables, 

G 



82 HISTORY OP THE 

supposed by the ancient Greeks to have been borrowed by one from 
the other : in general, too, they have the appearance of being separately 
derived from the common source of an earlier poetry ; and in Hesiod 
especially, if we may judge from statements of the ancients, and from the 
tone of his language, sayings and idioms of the highest antiquity are 
preserved in all their original purity and simplicity*. 

The opinion that Hesiod received the form of his poetry from Homer 
cannot, moreover, well be reconciled with the wide difference which ap- 
pears in the spirit and character of the two styles of epic poetry. Besides 
what we have already remarked upon this subject, we will notice one 
point which shows distinctly how little Hesiod allowed himself to be 
governed by rules derived from Homer. The Homeric poems, among 
all the forms in which poetry can appear, possess in the greatest degree 
what in modern times is called objectivity; that is, a complete aban- 
donment of the mind to the object, without any intervening conscious- 
ness of the situation or circumstances of the subject, or the individual 
himself. Homer's mind moves in a world of lofty thoughts and ener- 
getic actions, far removed from the wants and necessities of the present. 
There can be no doubt that this is the noblest and most perfect style of 
composition, and the best adapted to epic poetry. Hesiod, however, 
never soars to this height. He prefers to show us his own domestic 
life, and to make us feel its wants and privations. It would doubtless 
be an erroneous transfer of the manners of later poets to this primi- 
tive age, if we regarded Hesiod's accounts of his own life as mere 
fictions used as a vehicle for his poetic conceptions. Moreover, 
the tone in which he addresses his brother Perses has all the frank- 
ness and naivete of reality ; and, indeed, the whole arrangement of 
the poem of the Works and Days is unintelligible, unless we conceive 
it as founded on a real event, such as the poet describes. 

§ 2. This poem (which alone, according to Pausanias, the Boeotians 
hold to be a genuine work of Hesiod, and with which, therefore, we 
may properly begin the examination of the several works of this school) 
is so entirely occupied with the events o? common life, that the author 
would not seem to have been a poet by profession, as Homer was de- 

:: ' Thus the verse of the Works and Days, ftitrdos §' avl£ <p!\a> u^pivos Hgxto; u» 
(v. 370), was attributed to Pittheus of Troezen, a sage and prince of the early 
fabulous times. (See Aristotle in Plutarch. Theseus, c. 3.) The meaning, according 
to Buttmann, is, "Let the reward be surely agreed on with a friend." Homer has 
the shorter expression : ptaSos Vi el ci.oy.io; ttrrai. (See Buttmann's Lexilogus, in agxtos, 
p. 164, Engl, transl.) So likewise the phrase of Hesiod, uXXd Tin pot vavra, <rt^ fyvv 
\ rr-rA Tirgw (Theog. 35), is doubtless derived from the highest antiquity ; it is 
connected with the Homeric, Ov fjtiv tan vvv tcrriv ecro fyuo; olio" ct-ro tit^s raj ou^i- 
fUKUf and Oh yccp octto Iqv'os lain Tu.Xa.itpa.Tov oho' ccto -r'tT^s- The oak and the rock 
here represent the simple country life of the Greek autochthons, who thought that 
tln-y had sprung from their mountains and woods, and whose thoughts dwelt 
only upon these ideas, in primitive innocence and familiarity. These words, 
with which Hesiod breaks off his description of the scene of the shepherds 
sleeping with their flocks, sound just like a saying of the ancient Pierian bards 
among the Pelasgians. (Above, p. 27 — 8.) 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 83 

scribed by the ancients, but some Boeotian husbandman, whose mind 
had been so forcibly moved by peculiar circumstances as to give a 
poetical tone to the whole course of his thoughts ;md feelings. The 
father of Hesiod, as was before mentioned, had settled at Ascra as a 
farmer; and although he found the situation disadvantageous, from 
its great heat in summer and its storminess in winter, yet he had 
left a considerable property to his two sons, Hesiod and a younger 
brother, Perses. The brothers divided the inheritance ; and Perses, by 
means of bribes to the kings (who at this time alone exercised the office 
of judge), contrived to defraud his elder brother. But Perses showed a 
disposition which in later times became more and more common among 
the Greeks ; he chose rather to listen to lawsuits in the market-place, 
and to contrive legal quibbles by which he might defraud others of their 
property, than to follow the plough. Hence it came to pass that his 
inheritance, probably with the help of a foolish wife, was soon dissipated ; 
and he threatened to commence a new suit against his elder brother, in 
order to dispute the possession of that small portion of their father's 
land which had been allotted to him. The peculiar situation in which 
Hesiod was thus placed called forth the following expression of his 
thoughts. We give only the principal heads, in order to point out their 
reference to the circumstances of the poet*. 

" There are two kinds of contention" (the poet begins by saying), 
" the one blameable and hateful, the strife of war and litigation ; the 
other beneficial and praiseworthy, the competition of mechanics and 
artists. Avoid the first, O Perses ; and strive not again through the 
injustice of the judges to wrest from me my own ; keep rather to the 
works of honest industry. For the gods sent toil and misery among 
men, when they punished Prometheus for stealing fire from heaven by 
sending Pandora to Epimetheus, from whose box all evils were spread 
among mankind. We are now in the fifth age of the world, the age of 
iron, in which man must perpetually contend with want and trouble. 
I will now relate to the judges the fable of the hawk which killed 
the nightingale heedless of her song. The city where justice is 
practised will alone flourish under the protection of the gods. But to 
the city where wicked deeds are done, Zeus sends famine and plague. 
Know, ye judges, that ye are watched by myriads of Jove's immortal 
spirits, and his own all-seeing eye is upon you. To the brutes have the 
gods given the law of force — to men the law of justice. Excellence is 
not to be acquired, O Perses, except by the sweat of thy brow. Labour 
is pleasing to the gods, and brings no shame : honest industry alone 
gives lasting satisfaction. Beware of wrongful acts; honour the gods ; 
hold fast good friends and good neighbours ; be not misled by an im- 

* I pass over the short prooemium to Zeus, as it was rejected by most of the 
ancient critics, and probably was only one of the introductory strains which the 
Hesiodean rhapsodists could prefix to the Works and Days. 

g2 



SI HISTORY OP THE 

provident wife ; and provide yourself with a plentiful, but not too nume- 
rous an offspring, and you will be blessed with prosperity." 

With these and similar rules of economy (of which many are, perhaps, 
rather adapted to the wants of daily life than noble and elevated) the first 
part of the poem concludes ; its object being to improve the character and 
habits of Perses, to deter him from seeking riches by litigation, and to 
incite him to a life of labour as the only source of permanent prosperity. 
Mythical narratives, fables, descriptions, and moral apophthegms, partly 
of a proverbial kind, are ingeniously chosen and combined so as to 
illustrate and enforce the principal idea. 

In the second part, Hesiod shows Perses the succession in which his 
labours must follow if he determines to lead a life of industry. Observing 
the natural order of the seasons, he begins with the time of ploughing 
and sowing, and treats of the implements used in these processes, the 
plough and the beasts which draw it. He then proceeds to show how 
a prudent husbandman may employ the winter at home, when the 
labours of the field are at a stand ; adding a description of the storms 
and cold of a Boeotian winter, which several modern critics have 
(though probably without sufficient ground) considered as exaggerated, 
and have therefore doubted its genuineness. With the first appearance 
of spring follows the dressing and cutting of the vines, and, at the rising 
of the Pleiades (in the first half of our May), the reaping of the grain. 
The poet then tells us how the hottest season should be employed, when 
the corn is threshed. The vintage, which immediately precedes the 
ploughing, concludes the circle of these rural occupations. 

But as the poet's object was not to describe the charms of a country 
life, but to teach all the means of honest gain which were then open to 
the Ascraean countryman, he next proceeds, after having completed the 
subject of husbandry, to treat with equal detail that of navigation. 
Here we perceive how, in the time of Hesiod, the Boeotian farmer 
himself shipped the overplus of his corn and wine, and transported it 
to countries where these products were less abundant. If the poet had 
had any other kind of trade in view, he would have been more explicit 
upon the subject of the goods to be exported, and would have stated how a 
husbandman like Perses was to procure them. Hesiod recommends for 
a voyage of this kind the late part of the summer, on the 50th day after 
the summer solstice, when there was no work to be done in the field, 
and when the weather in the Greek seas is the most certain. 

All these precepts relating to the works of industry interrupt, some- 
what suddenly, the succession of economical rules for the management 
of a family*. The poet now speaks of the time of life when a man 

* It would be a great improvement if the verses relating to marriage (697 — 705, 
ed. Gottling) could be placed before Nouvoytvvis Tt -rut's u» (376). Then all the pru- 
dential maxims relating to neighbours, friends, wife, and children, would be 
explained before the labours of agriculture, and the subsequent rules of domestic 
economy would all refer to the maxim, il d' oV/v Mccmtm fx.ot.Ku.gm viVi/Xetyftiyo; ilivtci. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 



85 



should take a wife, and how he should look out for her. He then 
especially recommends to all to bear in mind that the immortal gods 
watch over the actions of men; in all intercourse with others to keep 
the tongue from idle and provoking- words ; and to preserve a certain 
purity and care in the commonest occurrences of every-day life. At 
the same time he gives many curious precepts, which resemble 
sacerdotal rules, with respect to the decorum to be observed in acts of 
worship, and, moreover, have much in common with the symbolic rules 
of the Pythagoreans, which ascribed a deep and spiritual import to 
many unimportant acts of common life. 

Of a very similar nature is the last part of this poem, which treats of 
the days on which it is expedient or inexpedient to do this or that busi- 
ness. These precepts, which do not relate to particular seasons of the 
year, but to the course of each lunar month, are exclusively of a super- 
stitious character, and are in great part connected with the different 
worships which were celebrated upon these days : but our knowledge is far 
too insufficient to explain them all*. 

If we regard the connexion of this poem, as indicated by the' heads 
which we have mentioned, it must be confessed that the whole is 
perfectly adapted to the circumstances of the case ; and conformable to 
the poet's view of turning his brother Perses from his scheme of enrich- 
ing himself by unjust lawsuits, and of stimulating him to a life of la- 
borious husbandry. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the 
poet has failed in producing so perfect an agreement of the several 
members of his work, that by their combination they form, as it were, 
one body. Indeed, the separate parts have often very little connexion 
with each other, and are only introduced by announcements such 
as these, " Now, if thou wilt, I will tell another story;" or, " Now I will 
relate a fable to the kings," &c. This plainly shows much less art in 
composition than is displayed in the Homeric poems; the reason of 
which was the far greater difficulty which must have been felt at that 
time of forming general reflections upon life into a connected whole, 
than of relating a great heroic event. 

Yet in the general tone of the poem, and in the sentiments which it 
displays, a sufficient uniformity is not wanting. We feel, as we read it, 
that we are transported back to an age of primitive simplicity, in which 
even the wealthy man does not disdain to increase his means by the 
labour of his own hands ; and an attention to economical cares was not 
considered ignoble, as it was among the later Greeks, who from hus- 
bandmen became mere politicians. S A coarse vein of homely good 

* On the seventh day the poet himself remarks the connexion with Apollo. The 
t«t£«j of the beginning and ending of the month is a day on which evils are to be 
feared: it was considered as the birthday of the toil-worn Hercules. On the 17th 
the corn is to be brought to the threshing floor: the 17th of Boedromion was the 
sacrificial day of Demeter and Cora at Athens (Boeckh. Corp. Inscript. Gr. No. 523), 
and a great day of the Eleusinia. 



86 HISTORY OF THE 

sense, nay, on en a dash oi* interested calculating shrewdness, which 
were deeply rooted in the Greek character, are combined with 
honourable principles of justice, expressed in nervous apophthegms 
and striking images. When we consider that the poet was brought 
up in these hereditary maxims of wisdom, and moreover that he was 
deeply convinced of the necessity of a life of laborious exertion, we 
shall easily comprehend how strongly an event such as that in which 
he was concerned with his brother Perses was calculated to strike 
his mind ; and from the contrast which it offered to his convictions, 
to induce him to make a connected exposition of them in a poem. 
This brings us to the true source of the Didactic Epos, which never 
can proceed from a mere desire to instruct ; a desire which has no 
connexion with poetry. Genuine didactic poetry always proceeds 
from some great and powerful idea, which has something so absorbing 
and attractive that the mind strives to give expression to it. In the Works 
and Days this fundamental idea is distinctly perceptible ; the decrees 
and institutions of the gods protect justice among men, they have made 
labour the only road to prosperity, and have so ordered the year that 
every work has its appointed season, the sign of which is discernible by 
man. In announcing these immutable ordinances and eternal laws, 
the poet himself is impressed with a lofty and solemn feeling, which 
manifests itself in a sort of oracular tone, and in the sacerdotal style 
with which many exhortations and precepts are delivered*. We have 
remarked this priestly character in the concluding part of the poem, 
and it was not unnatural that many in antiquity should annex to the 
last verse, " Observing the omens of birds, and avoiding transgressions,'' 
another didactic epic poem of the same school of poetry upon divination f. 
It is stated that this poem treated chiefly of the flight and cries of 
birds; and it agrees with this statement, that Hesiod, according to 
Pausanias, learned divination among the Acananians . the Acananian 
families of diviners deriving their descent from Melampus, whose ears, 
when a boy, were licked by serpents, whereupon he immediately under- 
stood the language of the birds. 

A greater loss than this supplement on divination is another poem 
of the same school, called the Lessons of Chiron (XsipwvoQ v7rodfjKai), 
as this was in some measure a companion or counterpart to the Works 
and Days. For while the extant poem keeps wholly within the circle 
of the yearly occupations of a Boeotian husbandman, the lost one repre- 
sented the wise Centaur, in his grotto upon Mount Pelion, instructing the 
young Achilles in all the knowledge befitting a young prince and hero. 

* We allude particularly to the yAyz. v-fan Ui^r, of Hesiod, and the piya. vf,<rn 
KeoTtrt of the Pythia : and to the truly oracular expressions of the Works and Days, 
as. the "branch of five," Tivrogos, for the "hand;" the "day-sleeper," -a^ookoits; 
avfy, for the thief, &c. : on which see Gbttling's Hesiod, Praef. p. xv. 

| Tovron iTayeuffi t/vej <r/?v ogvi6»ficevri!c&v, elrtvce. ' Arto'/.Xuvios o 'Po^to; a.6iru. — Proclus 
on the Works and Days, at the end, v. 824. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 87 

We might not improperly apply to this poem the name of a German 
poem of the middle ages, and call it ;i Greek liiffcrspicgel. 

§ 3. We now follow this school of poetry to the great attempt of 
forming from the Greek legends respecting; the gods a connected and 
regular picture of their origin and powers, and in general of the entire 
polytheism of the Greeks. The Theogony of Hesiod is not, indeed, to 
be despised as a poem ; besides many singular legends, it contains 
thoughts and descriptions of a lofty and imposing character ; but for the 
history of the religious faith of Greece it is a production of the highest 
importance. The notions concerning the gods, their rank, and their affini- 
ties, which had arisen in so much greater variety in the different dis- 
tricts of Greece than in any other country of the ancient world, found 
in the Theogony a test of their general acceptance. Every legend 
which could not be brought into agreement with this poem sank into 
the obscurity of mere local tradition, and lived only in the limited 
sphere of the inhabitants of some Arcadian district, or the ministers 
of some temple, under the form of a strange and marvellous tale, 
which was cherished with the greater fondness because its uncon- 
formity with the received theogony gave it the charm of mystery*. It 
was through Hesiod that Greece first obtained a kind of religious code, 
which, although without external sanctions or priestly guardians and 
interpreters (such as the Vedas had in the Brahmans, and the Zenda- 
vesta in the Magians), must have produced the greatest influence on 
the religious condition of the Greeks ; inasmuch as it impressed upon 
them the necessity of agreement, and as the notions prevalent among 
the most powerful races, and at the most renowned temples, were em- 
bodied by the poet with great skill. Hence Herodotus was justified 
in saying that Hesiod and Homer had made the theogony of the 
Greeks, had assigned the names, offices, and occupations of the gods, 
and had determined their forms. 

According to the religious notions of the Greeks, the deity, who 
governs the world with omnipotence, and guides the destinies of man 
with omniscience, is yet without one attribute, which is the most 
essential to our idea of the godhead — eternity. The gods of the 
Greeks were too closely bound up with the existence of the world 
to be exempt from the law by which large, shapeless masses are de- 
veloped into more and more perfect forms. To the Greeks the gods 
of Olympus were rather the summit and crowning point of organized 
and animate life, than the origin of the universe. Thus Zeus, who 
must be considered as the peculiar deity of the Greeks, was doubtless, 
long before the time of Homer or Hesiod, called Cronion, or Cronides, 

* Numbers of these fables, which cannot be reconciled with the Theogony, were, 
as we know from Pausanias, in currency, especially in Arcadia; but bow little should 
we know of them from writers wbo addressed themselves to the entire nation. The 
Attic tragedians likewise, in their accounts of the affinities of the gods, follow the 
Hesiodean Theogony far more than the local worships and legends of Attica. 



vs HISTORY OF THE 

which, according to the most probable interpretation, means the " Son 
of the Ancient of Days*;'' and, as the ruler of the clear heaven, he was 
derived from Ura?nut> or heaven itself. In like manner all the other 
£ods were, according- (o their peculiar attributes and character, con- 
nected with beings and appearances which seemed the most ancient. 
The relation of the primitive and the originating to the recent and 
the derived was always conceived under the form of generation and 
birth — the universe being considered to have a life, like that of animals; 
and hence even heaven and earth were imagined to have an animal 
organization. The idea of creation, of so high antiquity in the east, 
and so early known to the Indians, Persians, and Hebrews, which sup- 
posed the Deity to have formed the world with design, as an earthly 
artificer executes his work, was foreign to the ancient Greeks, and could 
only arise in religions which ascribed a personal existence and an eter- 
nal duration to the godhead. Hence it is clear that theogonies, in the 
widest sense of the word — that is, accounts of the descent of the gods — 
are as old as the Greek religion itself; and, doubtless, the most ancient 
bards would have been induced to adopt and expand such legends in their 
poems. One result of their attempts to classify the theogonic beings, 
is the race of Titans, who were known both to Homer and Hesiod, and 
formed a link between the general personifications of parts of the 
universe and the human forms of the Olympic gods, by whose might 
they were supposed to be hurled into the depths of Tartarus. 

Surrounded as he was by traditions and ancient poems of this kind, it 
would have been impossible for Hesiod (as many moderns have con- 
ceived) to form his entire Theogony upon abstract philosophical prin- 
ciples of his own concerning the powers of matter and mind : if his sys- 
tem had been invented by himself, it would not have met with such 
ready acceptance from succeeding generations. But, on the other hand, 
Hesiod cannot be considered as a mere collector of scattered traditions 
or fragments of earlier poems, which he repeated almost at random, 
without being aware of their hidden connexion : the choice which he 
made among different versions of the same fable, and his skilful arrange- 
ment of the several parts, are of themselves a sufficient proof that he 
was guided by certain fundamental ideas, and that he proceeded upon a 
connected view of the formation of outward nature. 

To make this position more clear, it will perhaps be most advisable 
to illustrate the nature of the primitive beings which,' according to the 
Theogony, preceded the race of the Titans ; with the view of showing 
the consistency and connexion of Hesiod's notions : for the rest, a more 
general survey will suffice. 

* Whatever doubts may exist with regard to the etymology of Koovc; (whether 
the name comes from x^uivu, or is allied with xoovo;), yet everything stated of him 
agrees with this conception, his dominion during the golden age, the representation 
of a simple patriarchal life at the festival of the Kfivm, Cronus as the ruler of the 
departed heroes, &c. 



LITERATURE OF VNTIENT GREECE. 89 

" First of all (the Theogony, strictly so called, begins) was Chaos"* ; 
that is, the abyss, in which all peculiar shape and figure is lost, and of 
which we arrive at the conception by excluding all idea of definite form. 
It is evident, however, that, as Hesiod represents other beings as spring- 
ing out of Chaos, he must have meant by this word not mere empty 
space, but a contused mixture of material atoms, instinct with the prin- 
ciple of life. " Afterwards arose (that is from Chaos) the wide-bosomed 
Earth y the firm resting-place of all things; and gloomy Tartara in the 
depth of the Earth; and Eros, the fairest of the immortal godsf." 
The Earth, the mother of all living things, according to the notion of 
the Greeks and many oriental countries, is conceived to arise out of the 
dark abyss ; her foundations are in the depth of night, and her surface 
is the soil upon which light and life exist. Tartara is, as it were, only 
the dark side of the Earth ; by which it still remains connected with 
Chaos. As the Earth and Tartara represent the brute matter of Chaos 
in a more perfect form, so in Eros the living spirit appears as the 
principle of all increase and development. It is a lofty conception of 
the poet of the Theogony, to represent the God of Love as proceed- 
ing out of Chaos at the beginning of all things ; though probably 
this thought did not originate with him, and had already been expressed 
in ancient hymns to Eros, sung at Thespise. Doubtless it is not an 
accidental coincidence that this city, which was 40 stadia from Ascra, 
should have possessed the most renowned temple of Eros in all Greece ; 
and that in its immediate neighbourhood Hesiod should have given to 
this deity a dignity and importance of which the Homeric poems con- 
tain no trace. But it appears that the poet was satisfied with borrowing 
this thought from the Thespian hymns without applying it in the 
subsequent part of his poem. For although it is doubtless implied that 
all the following marriages and births of the gods spring from the in- 
fluence of Eros, the poet nevertheless omits expressly to mention its 
operation. " Out of Chaos came Erebus" the darkness in the depths 
of the Earth, " and black Night" the darkness which passes over the 
surface of the Earth. " From the union of Night and Erebus pro- 
ceeded JEther and Day.'' It may perhaps appear strange that these 
dark children of Chaos bring forth the ever-shining JEther of the 
highest heavens, and the bright daylight of the earth ; this, however, 
is only a consequence of the general law of development observed in the 
Theogony, that the dim and shapeless is the prior in point of time ; 
and that the world is perpetually advancing from obscurity to bright- 

* ;£«a,-, literally synonymous with ^a^a, chasm. 

f Plato and Aristotle in their quotations of this passage omit Tartara (also called 
Tartarus) ; but probably only because it has not so much importance among the 
principal muivli as the others. Tartara could also be considered as included under 
the Earth, as it is also called Ta^rtt^a ya'tn;. But the poet of the Theogony must 
have stated his origin in this place ; as lower down he describes Typhosus as the 
son of ihe Earth and Tartarus. 



90 HISTORY OF THE 

ness. Light bursting from the bosom of darkness is a beautiful image, 
which recurs in the cosmogonies of other ancient nations. " The Earth 
then first produced the starry heaven, of equal extent with herself, that 
it might cover her all round, so as to be for ever a firm resting-place for 
the gods ; and also the far-ranging mountains, the lovely abodes of the 
nymphs." As the hills are elevations of the Earth, so the Heaven is con- 
ceived as a firmament spread over the Earth c , which, according to the 
general notion above stated, would have proceeded, and, as it were, 
grown out of it. At the same time, on account of the various fertilizing 
and animating influences which the Earth receives from the Heaven, the 
Greeks were led to conceive Earth and Heaven as a married pair*, whose 
descendants form in the Theogony a second great generation of deities. 
But another offspring of the Earth is first mentioned. " The Earth 
also bore the roaring swelling sea, the Pontus, without the joys of mar- 
riage. ,, By expressly remarking of Pontus that the Earth produced 
him alone without love, although the other beings just enumerated 
sprung from the Earth singly, the poet meant to indicate his rough 
and unkindly nature. It is the wild, waste salt sea, separated at 
its very origin from the streams and springs of fresh water, which 
supply nourishment to vegetation and to animal life. These are all 
made to descend from Ocean, who is called the eldest of the Titans. 
These, together with the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, were produced 
by the union of Earth and Heaven ; and it is sufficient here to remark 
of them that the Titans, according to the notions of Hesiod, represent a 
system of things in which elementary beings, natural powers, and notions 
of order and regularity are united into a whole. The Cyclopes de- 
note the transient disturbances of this order by storms, and the Heca- 
toncheires, or the hundred-handed giants, signify the fearful power of 
the greater revolutions of nature. 

The subsequent arrangement of the poem depends on its mixed 
genealogical and narrative character. As soon as a new generation of 
gods is produced, the events are related through which it overcame 
the earlier race and obtained the supremacy. Thus, after the Titans 
and their brethren, the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, are enumerated, it 
is related how Cronus deprives his father of the power, by producing 
new beings, of supplanting those already in existence ; whereupon follow 
the races of the other primitive beings, Night and Pontus. Then suc- 
ceed the descendants of the Titans. In speaking of Cronus, the poet 
relates how Zeus was preserved from being devoured by his father, and 
of Iapetus, how his son Prometheus incensed Zeus by coming for- 
ward as the patron of the human race, though not for their benefit. 
Then follows a detailed account of the battle which Zeus and his 
kindred, assisted by the Hecatoncheires, waged against the Titans ; with 

* The same notion had prevailed, though in a less distinct form, in the early 
religion of outward nature among the Greeks. See above ch. ii. § 4. (p. 14). 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 91 

the description of the dreadful abode of Tartara, in which the Titans 
were imprisoned. This part, it must he confessed, appears to be over- 
loaded by additions of rhapsodists. An afterpiece to the battle of the 
Titanfl is the rebellion of Typlmuis (born of the Earth and Tartara) 
against Zeus. The descendants of Zeus and the Olympian gods, united 
with him, formed the last part of the original Theogony. 

Notwithstanding the great simplicity of this plan, we may yet remark 
a number of refinements which show a maturely considered design on 
the part of the poet. For instance, Hesiod might have connected the 
descendants of Night (born without marriage)* with the children 
which she bore to Erebus, namely iEther and Dayf. But he relates 
first the battle of Cronus against Uranus, and the mutilation of the 
latter; whereby the first interruption of the peaceable order of the 
world is caused, and anger and curses, personified by the Furies, are 
introduced into the world. The mutilation, however, of Uranus caused 
the production of the Meliae, or Nymphs of the Ash Trees, that is, the 
mightiest productions of vegetation ; the Giants, or most powerful beings 
of human form ; and the Goddess of Love herself. It is not till after 
this disturbance of the tranquillity of the world that Night produces 
from her dark bosom those beings, such as Death, and Strife, and Woe, 
and Blame, which are connected with the sufferings of mankind. Like- 
wise the race of Pontus, so rich in monsters, with which the heroes were 
to fight their fiercest battles, are properly introduced after the first deed 
of violence upon Uranus.' — II is also evidently by design that the two 
Titans, Cronus and lapetus, also named together by Homer, are, in the 
genealogy of their descendants J, arranged in a different order than at 
the first mention of the Titans §. In the latter passage Cronus is 
the youngest of all, just as Zeus is in Hesiod the youngest among his 
brothers ; whilst in Homer he reigns by the right of primogeniture. 
But Hesiod supposes the world to be in a state of perpetual develop- 
ment; and as the sons overcome the fathers, so also the youngest sons 
are the most powerful, as standing at the head of a new order of things. 
On the other hand, the race of lapetus, which refers exclusively to 
the attributes and destinies of mankind ||, is placed after the de- 
scendants of Cronus, from whom the Olympic gods proceed ; because the 
actions and destinies of those human Titans are entirely determined by 

* v.211, uq. f v. 124. J v. 453, 507. § v. 132, seq. 

jl In the genealogy of lapetus in the Theogony are preserved remains of an 
ancient poem on the lot of mankind, lapetus himself is the {< fallen man'' (from 
;«<rr«, root I An), the human race deprived of their former happiness. Of his sons, 
Atlas and Menoetius represent the dupos of the human soul : Atlas (from tXtjvki, 
TAA), the enduring and obstinate spirit, to whom the gods allot the heaviest bur- 
dens ; and Menoetius (pUos and oJroi), the unconquerable and confident spirit, whom 
Zeus hurls into Erebus. Prometheus and Epimetheus, on the other hand, personify 
vovs ; the former prudent foresight, the latter the worthless knowledge which comes 
after the deed. And the gods contrive it so that whatever benefits are gained for the 
human race by the former are lost to it again through his brother. 



92 HISTORY OF THE 

their relation to the Olympians, who have reserved to themselves alone a 
constantly equal measure of prosperity, and act jointly in repelling with 
equal severity the bold attempts of the Iapetids. 

Although therefore this poem is not merely an accumulation of raw 
materials, but contains many connected thoughts, and is formed on a 
well-digested plan, yet it cannot be denied that neither in the Theogony 
nor in the Works and Days can that perfect art of composition be found 
which is so conspicuous in the Homeric poems. Hesiod has not only 
faithfully preserved the ancient tradition, and introduced without altera- 
tion into his poetry many time-honoured sayings, and many a verse of 
earlier songs, but he also seems to have borrowed long passages, and even 
entire hymns, when they happened to suit the plan of his poem ; and with- 
out greatly changing their form. Thus it is remarkable that the battle 
of the Titans does not begin (as it would be natural to expect) with the 
resolution of Zeus and the other Olympians to wage war against the 
Titans, but with the chaining of Briareus and the other Hecatoncheires 
by Uranus ; nor is it until the poet has related how Zeus set free these 
Hecatoncheires, by the advice of the Earth, that we are introduced to 
the battle with the Titans, which has already been some time going on. 
And this part of the Theogony concludes with the Hecatoncheires being 
set by the gods to watch over the imprisoned Titans, and Briareus, by 
his marriage with Cymopoleia, becoming the son-in-law of Poseidon. 
This Briareus, who in Homer is also called JEgaeon, and represents the 
violent commotions and heavings of the sea, was a being who in many 
places seems to have been connected with the worship of Poseidon*, 
and it is not improbable that in the temples of this god hymns were 
sung celebrating him as the vanquisher of the Titans, one of which 
Hesiod may have taken as the foundation of his narrative of the battle 
of the Titans. 

It seems likewise evident that the Theogony has been in many places 
interpolated by rhapsodists, as was naturally to be expected in a poem 
handed down by oral tradition. Enumerations of names always offered 
facilities for this insertion of new verses ; as, for example, the list of 
streams in the Theogony, which are called sons of the Oceanf. 
Among these we miss exactly those rivers which we should expect most 
to find, the Boeotian Asopus and Cephisus ; and we find several which 
at any rate lie beyond the sphere of the Homeric geography, such as the 
Ister, the Eridanus, and the Nile, no longer the river of Egypt, as in 
Homer, but under its more modern name. The most remarkable cir- 
cumstance, however, is that in this brief list of rivers, the passage of 
Homer | which names eight petty streams flowing from the mountains 
of Ida to the coast, has been so closely followed, that seven of them 

* Poseidon, from uiyz 5} which signifies waves in a state of agitation, was also 
called Alyalos and Alyaiuv. 

f v. 338, scq. t Iliad, xii. 26. 






LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 93 

are named in Hesiod. This seems to prove incontestably that the 
Theogony has been interpolated by rhapsodists who were familiar witli 
the Homeric poems as well as with those of Hesiod. 

It has been already stated that the Theogony originally terminated 
with the races of the Olympian gods, that is, at v. 962 ; the part which 
follows being only added in order to make a transition to another and 
longer poem, which the rhapsodists appended as a kind of continuation 
to the Theogony. For it seems manifest that a composer of genealogical 
legends of this kind would not be likely to celebrate the goddesses who, 
"joined in love with mortal men, had borne godlike children" (which is 
the subject of the last part in the extant version), if he had not also 
intended to sing of the gods who with mortal women had begotten 
mighty heroes (a far more frequent event in Greek mythology). The 
god Dionysus, and Hercules, received among the gods (both of whom 
sprang from an alliance of this kind), are indeed mentioned in a former 
part of the poem*. But there remain many other heroes, whose 
genealogy is not traced, of far greater importance than Medeius, Phocus, 
iEneas, and many other sons of goddesses. Moreover, the extant 
concluding verses of the Theogony furnish a complete proof that a 
poem of this description was annexed to it ; inasmuch as the women 
whom the Muses are in these last verses called on to celebrate t can be 
no other than the mortal beauties to whom the gods came down from 
heaven. As to the nature of this lost poem of Hesiod something will 
be said hereafter. 

Hitherto we have said nothing upon that part of the Theogony which 
has furnished so intricate a problem to the higher department of criti- 
cism, viz., the procemium, as it is only after having taken a general 
view of the whole poem that we can hope to succeed in ascertaining the 
original form of this part. It can scarcely be questioned that this 
procemium, with its disproportionate length (v. 1 — 115), its intolerable 
repetition of the same or very similar thoughts, and the undeniable in- 
coherences of several passages, could not be the original introduction to 
the Theogony; it appears, indeed, to be a collection of all that the 
Boeotian bards had produced in praise of the Muses. It is not, how- 
ever, necessary, in order to explain how this confused mass was formed, 
to have recourse to complicated hypotheses ; or to suppose that this long 
procemium was designedly formed of several shorter ones. It appears, 
indeed, that a much simpler explanation may be found, if we proceed 
upon some statements preserved in ancient authorsj. The genuine 

* v. 940, seq. 

f Nuv 2« yuveciKuv (fwAav uuffatt nhv'.'xuou Movtrut, &C. 

I Especially the statement in Plutarch (torn. ii. p. 743, C. ed. Francof.) that the 
account of the hirth of the Muses from Hesiod's poems (viz., v. 36 — 67 in our 
proem) was sung as a separate hymn ; and the statement of Aristophanes, the Alex- 
andrine grammarian (in the scholia to v. 68), that the ascent of the Muses to 
Olympus followed their dances on Helicon. 



94 HISTORY OF THE 

prooMnium contained the beautiful story above mentioned of the visit 
of the Muses to Helicon, and of the consecration of Hesiod to the office 
of a poet by the gift of a laurel branch. Next after this must have fol- 
lowed the passage which describes the return of the Muses to Olympus, 
where they celebrate their father Zeus in his palace as the vanquisher 
of Cronus, and as the reigning governor of the world ; which might be 
succeeded by the address of the poet to the Muses to reveal to him the 
descent and genealogies of the gods. Accordingly the verses 1 — 35, 
6S — 74, 104 — 115, would form the original procemium, in the con- 
nexion of which there is nothing objectionable, except that the last in- 
vocation of the Muses is somewhat overloaded by the repetition of the 
same thought with little alteration. Of the intervening parts one, viz., 
v. 36 — 67, is an independent hymn, which celebrates the Muses as 
Olympian poetesses produced by Zeus in Pieria in the neighbourhood 
of Olympus, and has no particular reference to the Theogony. For the 
enumeration contained in it of the subjects sung by the Muses in 
Olympus, namely, first, songs to all the gods, ancient and recent, 
then hymns to Zeus in particular, and, lastly, songs upon the heroic 
races and the battle of the Giants, comprehends the entire range of the 
Boeotian epic poetry \ nay, even the poems on divination of the school 
of Hesiod are incidentally mentioned*. This hymn to the Muses 
was therefore peculiarly well fitted to serve not only as a separate 
epic song, but, like the longer Homeric hymns, to open the contest of 
Boeotian minstrels at any festival. 

But the Muses were, according to the statement of this procemiumf, 
celebrated at the end as well as at the beginning ; consequently there 
must have been songs of the Boeotian epic poets, in which they returned 
to the Muses from the peculiar subject of their composition. For a 
concluding address of this kind nothing could be more appropriate 
than that the poet should address himself to the princes, who were pre- 
eminent among the listening crowd, that he should show them how 
much they stood in need of the Muses both in the judgment-hall and 
in the assemblies of the people, and (which was a main point with 
Hesiod) should impress upon their hearts respect for the deities of 
poetry and their servants. Precisely of this kind is the other passage 
inserted in the original prooemium, v. 75 — 103, which would have pro- 
duced a good effect at the close of the Theogony ; by bringing back the 
poetry, which had so long treated exclusively of the genealogies of the 
gods, to the realities of human life ; whereas, in the introduction, the whole 
passage is entirely out of place. But this passage could not remain in 
the place to which it belongs, viz., after v. 962, because the part relating 
to the goddesses who were joined in love with mortal men was inserted 
here, in order that the mortal women who had been loved by gods might 
follow, and thus the Theogony be infinitely prolonged. Hence, in 

* V. 38. vftnvffcci ra t Vovros. ra <r' ltffof/,ivec rtgo t Uvt». f V. 34. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 95 

making an edition of the Theogony, in which the pieces belonging to 
it were introduced into the series oi' the poem, nothing remained 
but to insert the hymn to the Muses as well as the epilogue in the 
procemiutD ; an adaptation which, however, could only have been made 
in an age when the true feeling for the ancient epic poetry had nearly 
passed away*. 

Lastly, with regard to the relation between the Theogony and the 
Works and Days, it cannot be doubted that there is a great resemblance 
in the style and character of the two poems ; but who shall pretend to 
decide that this resemblance is so great as to warrant an opinion that 
these poems were composed by an individual, and not by a succession 
of minstrels ? It is, however, certain that the author of the Theogony 
and the author of the Works and Days wish to be considered as the 
same person; viz., as the native of Helicon who had been trained to a 
country life, and had been endowed by the Muses with the gift of poetry. 
Nor can it be doubted that the original Hesiod, the ancestor of this 
family of poets, really rose to poetry from the occupations of common 
life ; although his successors may have pursued it as a regular pro- 
fession. It is remarkable how the domestic and economical spirit of 
the poet of the Works appears in the Theogony, wherever the wide dif- 
ference of the subjects permits it ; as in the legend of Prometheus and 
Epimetheus. It is true that this takes a somewhat different turn in 
the Theogony and in the Works ; as in the latter it is the casket 
brought by Pandora from which proceed all human ills, while in the 
former this charming and divinely endowed maiden brings woe into the 
world by being the progenitress of the female sex. Yet the ancient 
bard views the evil produced by women not in a moral but in an econo- 
mical light. He does not complain of the seductions and passions of 
which they are the cause, but laments that women, like the drones in a 
hive, consume the fruits of others' industry instead of adding to the sum. 

§ 4. It is remarkable that the same school of poetry which was 
accustomed to treat the weaker sex in this satiric spirit should have 
produced epics of the heroic mythology which pre-eminently sang the 
praises of the women of antiquity, and connected a large part of the 
heroic legends with renowned names of heroines. Yet the school 
of Hesiod might probably find a motive in existing relations and 
political institutions for such laudatory catalogues of the women of 
early times. The neighbours of the Boeotians, the Locrians, possessed 
a nobility consisting of a hundred families, all of which (according to 
Polybiusf) founded their title to nobility upon their descent from heroines. 

* That there was another and wholly different version of the Theogony, which 
contained at the end a passage deriving the origin of Hephaestus and Athene from 
a contest of Zeus and Here, appears from the testimony of Chrysippus, in Galen de 
Hippocratis et Platonis dogm. iii. 8, p. 349, seq. 

f xii. o. 



96 HISTORY OP THE 

Pindar, also, in the ninth Olympian ode, celebrates Protogeneia as the 
ancestress of the kings of Opus. That the poetry of this school was con- 
nected with the country of the Locrians also appears from the tradition 
mentioned by Thucydides* that Hesiod died and was buried [in 
the temple of Zeus Nemeius, near Oeneon. The district of Oeneon 
was bordered by that of Naupactus, which originally belonged to the 
Locrians ; and it cannot be doubted that the grave of Hesiod, mentioned 
in the territory of Naupactusf, is the same burying place as that near 
Oeneon. Hence it is the more remarkable that Naupactus was also 
the birth-place of an epic poem, which took from it the name of Nan- 
pactia, and in which women of the heroic age were celebrated^. 
From all this it would follow that it was a Locrian branch of the 
Hesiodean school of poets whence proceeded the bard by whom 
the Eoiae were composed. This large poem, called the Eoia, or 
the Great Eoice (/xeyaXai 'Holat), took its name from the circum- 
stance that the several parts of it all began with the words ?^ ofy, 
aut qualis. Five beginnings of this kind have been preserved 
which have this in common, that those words refer to some heroine 
who, beloved by a god, gave birth to a renowned hero§. Thence 
it appears that the whole series began with some such introduc- 
tion as the following : " Such women never will be seen again as 
were those of former times, whose beauty and charms induced 
even the gods to descend from Olympus." Each separate part then 
referred to this exordium, being connected with it by the constant 
repetition of the words f/ oit] in the initial verses. The most con- 
siderable fragment from which the arrangement of the individual parts 
can be best learnt is the 56 verses which are prefixed as an introduction 
to the poem on the shield of Hercules, and which, as is seen from the 
first verse, belong to the Eoiae. They treat of Alcmene, but without 
relating her origin and early life. The narrative begins from the 
flight of Amphitryon (to whom Alcmene was married) from his home, 
and her residence in Thebes, where the father of gods and men de- 
scended nightly from Olympus to visit her, and begot Hercules, 
the greatest of heroes. Although no complete history of Alcmene 
is given, the praise of her beauty and grace, her understanding, and her 
conjugal love is a main point with the poet ; and we may also perceive 

* iii. 95. t Pausan. ix. 38. 3. 

\ Pausanias, x. 38, 6, uses of it the expression %<rn Tinotrifilva. is ywa.7x.a.s, and else- 
where the Hesiodean poem is called ru I; yuvaTxas ah'opiva. From single quotations 
it appears that, in the Naupactia, the daughters of Minyas, as well as Medea, were 
particularly celebrated, and that frequent mention was made of the expedition of the 
Argonauts. 

6 The extant verses (which can be seen in the collection of fragments in Gais- 
ford's Poeta? Minores, and other editions) refer to Coronis, the mother of Asclepius 
by Apollo, to Anliope, the mother of Zethus and Amphion by Zeus, to Mecionice, 
the mother of Euphemus by Poseidon, and to Cyrene, the mother of Aristaeus by 
Apollo. The longer fragment relating to Alcmene is explained in the text. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 97 

from extant fragments of the continuation of this section of the Eoite, 

that in the relation ol* the exploits of Hercules, tin' poet frequently re- 
curred to Alcmene; and her relations with her son, her admiration of 
his heroic valour, and her grief at the labours imposed upon him, were 
depicted with great tenderness *. From this specimen we may form a 
judgment of the general plan which was followed throughout the poem 
of the Eoiae. 

The inquiry into the character and extent of the Eoiae is however 
rendered more difficult by the obscurity which, notwithstanding- much 
examination, rests upon the relation of this poem to the KaruXoyoc 
yvyatttwv, the Catalogue of Women. For this latter poem is some- 
times stated to be the same as the Eoiae ; and for example, the 
fragment on Alcmene, which, from its beginning, manifestly belongs to 
the Eoiae, is in the Scholia to Hesiod placed in the fourth book of the 
Catalogue : sometimes, again, the two poems are distinguished, and the 
statements of the Eoiae and of the Catalogue are opposed to each otherf. 
The Catalogues are described as an historical-genealogical poem, a cha- 
racter quite different from that of the Eoiae, in which only such women 
could be mentioned as were beloved by the gods: on the other hand, 
the Catalogues resembled the Eoiae, when in the first book it was related 
that Pandora, the first woman according to the Legend of the Theo- 
gony, bore Deucalion to Prometheus, from whom the progenitors of the 
Hellenic nation were then derived. We are therefore compelled to sup- 
pose that originally the Eoiae and the Catalogues were different in plan 
and subject, only, that both were especially dedicated to the celebration 
of women of the heroic age, and that this then caused the compilation 
of a version in which both poems were moulded together into one 
whole. It is also easy to comprehend how much such poems, by their 
unconnected form, would admit of constant additions, supposing only that 
they were strung together by genealogies or other links; and it need 
not therefore seem surprising that the Eoiae, the foundation of which had 
doubtless been laid at an early period, still received additions about the 
40th Olympiad. The part which referred to Cyrene, a Thessalian 
maid, who was carried off by Apollo into Libya, and there bore Aris- 
taeus, was certainly not written before the founding of the city of 
Cyrene in Libya (Olymp. 37). The entire Mythus could only have 

* A beautiful passage, which relates to this point, is the address of Alcmene to 
he r son, u tIkvov, -h fJi.ti.Xa. %yi <ri Tovwoorarov xcc) cioitrrov Zib; \r'ix.vuixt Ta?^. 

On the fragments of this part of the Eoiae, see Dorians, vol. i. p. 540, Engl. 
Tran si. 

f For example, in the scholia to Apoll. Rhod. II. 181. Moreover, the Eoiae in 
which Coronis was celebrated as the mother of Asclepius, was in contradiction with 
the Karcixoyes AioKiTTi^eav, in which Arsinoe, the daughter of Leucippus, according 
to the Messenian tradition, was the mother of Asclepius, as appears from Schol. 
Theogon. 142. 

H 



HISTORY OF THE 

originated with the settlement of the Greeks of Thera, among- whom 
were noble families of Thessalian origin. 

Of the remaining poems which in antiquity went by the name of 
Hesiod, it is still less possible to give a complete notion. The Melam- 

' ,i is as it were the heroic representation of that divinatory spirit of 
the Hesiodean poetry, the didactic forms of which have been already 
mentioned. It treated of the renowned prince, priest, and prophet of 
the Argives, Melampus ; and as the greater part of the prophets who 
were celebrated in mythology were derived from this Melampus, the 
Hesiodean poet, with his predilection for genealogical connexion, pro- 
bably did riot fail to embrace the entire race of the Melampodias. 

The JEgimius of Hesiod shows by its name that it treated of the 
mythical Prince of the Dorians, who, according to the legend, was the 
friend and ally of Hercules, whose son Hyllus he is supposed to have 
adopted and brought up with his own two sons Pamphylus and Dyman, 
a legend which referred to the distribution of the Dorians into three 
Phylae or tribes, the Hylleis, Pamphylians, and Dymanes. The frag- 
ments of this poem also show that it comprehended the genealogical 
traditions of the Dorians, and the part of the mythology of Hercules 
closely allied to it ; however difficult it may be to form a w r ell-grounded 
idea of the plan of this Epos. 

An interesting kind of composition attributed to Hesiod are the 
smaller epics, in which not a whole series of legends or a complicated 
story was described, but some separate event of the Heroic Mythology, 
which usually consisted more in bright and cheerful descriptions than 
in actions of a more elevated cast. Of this kind was the marriage of 
Ceyx, the well-known Prince of Trachin, who was also allied in close 
amity with Hercules; and a kindred subject, The Epithalamium of 
Peleus and Tlietis. We might also mention here the Descent of The- 
seus and Pirithous into the Infernal Regions, if this adventure of the 
two heroes was not merely introductory, and a description of Hades in 
a religious spirit the principal object of the poem. We shall best illus- 
trate this kind of small epic poems by describing the one which has been 
preserved, viz., the Shield of Hercules. This poem contains merely one 
adventure of Hercules, his combat with the son of Ares, Cycnus, in the 
Temple of Apollo at Pagasae. It is clear to every reader of the poem 
that the first 56 verses are taken out of the Eoiae, and only inserted be- 
cause the poem itself had been handed down without an introduction, 
'i here is no further connexion between these two parts, than that the 
first relates the origin of the hero, of whom the short epic then 
relates a separate adventure. It would have been as well, and perhaps 
better, to have prefixed a brief hymn to Hercules. The description of 
the Shield of Hercules is however far the most detailed part of the poem 
and that for which the whole appears to have been composed ; a descrip- 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 99 

tion which was manifestly occasioned by that of the shield of Achilles in 
the Iliad, but nevertheless quite peculiar, and executed in the genuine 
spirit of the Hesiodean school. For while the reliefs upon the shield of 
Achilles are entirely drawn from imagination, and pure poetical imagi- 
nation, objects are represented upon the shield of Hercules which were 
in fact the first subjects of the Greek artists who worked reliefs in 
bronze and other decorative sculptures *. We cannot, therefore, sup- 
pose the shield of Hesiod to be anterior to the period of the Olympiads, 
because before that time nothing was known of similar works of art 
among the Greeks. But on the other hand, it cannot be posterior to 
the 40th Olympiad, as Hercules appears in it armed and equipped like 
any other hero ; whereas about this date the poets began to represent 
him in a different costume, with the club and lion's skin f. The entire 
class of these short epics appears to be a remnant of the style of the 
primitive bards, that of choosing separate points of heroic history, in 
order to enliven an hour of the banquet, before longer compositions had 
been formed from them f . On the other hand, these short Hesiodean 
epics are connected with lyric poetry, particularly that of Stesichorus, who 
sometimes composed long choral odes on the same or similar subjects (as 
for example, Cycnus), and not without reference to Hesiod. This close 
approximation of the Hesiodean epic poetry and the lyric poetry of Ste- 
sichorus doubtless gave occasion to the legend that the latter was the 
son of Hesiod, although he lived much later than the real founder of 
the Hesiodean school of poetry. 

Of the other names of Hesiodean Poems, which are mentioned by 

* The shield of Achilles contains, on the prominence in the middle, a representation 
of earth, heaven, and sea : then in the next circular band two cities, the one engaged 
in peaceable occupations, the other beleagured by foes : afterwards, in six depart- 
ments (which must be considered as lying around concentrically in a third row), rural 
and joyous scenes — sowing, harvest, vine-picking, a cattle pasture, a flock of sheep, a 
choral dance : lastly, in the external circle, the ocean. The poet takes a delight in 
adorning this implement of bloody war with the most pleasing scenes of peace, and 
pays no regard to what the sculptors of his time were able to execute. The Hesiod- 
ean poet, on the other hand, places in the middle of the shield of Hercules a terrible 
dragon (lipe&xovros tpoftoi), surrounded by twelve twisted snakes, exactly as the gorgo- 
neum or head of Medusa is represented : oh Tyrrhenian shields of Tarquinii other 
monstrous heads are similarly introduced in the middle. A battle of wild boars 
and lions makes a border, as is often the case in early Greek sculptures and vases. 
It must be conceived as a narrow band or ring round the middle. The first consi- 
derable row, which surrounds the centre piece in a circle, consists of four depart- 
ments, of which two contain warlike and two peaceable subjects. So that the entire 
shield contains, as it were, a sanguinary and a tranquil side. In these are repre- 
sented the battle of the Centaurs, a choral dance in Olympus, a harbour and 
fishermen, Perseus and the Gorgons. Of these the first and last subjects are among 
those which are known to have earliest exercised the Greek artists. An external row 
(prtlp abriwv, v. 237) is occupied by a city at war and a city at peace, which the poet 
borrows from Homer, but describes with greater minuteness, and indeed overloads 
with too many details. The rim, as in the other shield; is surrounded by the ocean. 

t See the remarks on Peisander below, ch. x, § 3. 
% See above, p, 40, (ch. iv. § 6); 

h2 



100 HISTORY OF THE 

gimmmarans, some Ut doubtful, as they do not occur in ancient au- 
thor-., and Others do not by their title give any idea of their plan and 
subject ; so that we can make no use of them in our endeavour to con- 
vej a notion oi' the tone and character of the Hesiodean poetry. 



CHAPTER X. 

$ 1. General character of other Epic Poets.— § 2. Cinsethon of Lac.edaemon, Eumehi8 
of Corinth, Asius of Samos, Chersias of Orehomenus.— § 3. Epic Poems on Her- 
cules ; the Taking of (Echalia ; the Heraclea of Peisander of Rhodes. 

§ 1. Great as was the number of poems which in ancient times passed 
under the name of Homer, and were connected in the way of supple- 
ment or continuation with the Iliad and Odyssey, and also of those 
which were included under the all-comprehensive name of Hesiod, yet 
these formed only about a half of the entire epic literature of the early 
Greeks. The hexameter was, for several centuries, the only perfectly 
developed form of poetry, as narratives of events of early times were the 
general amusement of the people. The heroic mythology was an inex- 
haustible mine of subjects, if they were followed up into the legends of 
the different races and cities; it was therefore natural, that in the 
most various districts of Greece poets should arise, who, for the gratifi- 
cation of their countrymen, worked up these legends into an epic form, 
either attempting to rise to an imitation of the Homeric style, or con- 
tenting themselves with the easier task of adopting that of the school 
of Hesiod. Most of these poems evidently had little interest except in 
their subjects, and even this was lost when the logographers collected 
into shorter w r orks the legends of which they were composed. Hence 
it happened only occasionally that some learned inquirer into tradi- 
tionary story took the trouble to look into these epic poems. Even 
now it is of great importance, for mythological researches, carefully to 
collect all the fragments of these ancient poems; such, for example, as 
the Phoronh and Danais (the works of unknown authors), which con- 
tained the legends of the earliest times of Argos ; but, for a history of 
literature, the principal object of which is to give a vivid notion of the 
character of writings, these are empty and unmeaning names. There 
are, however, a few epic poets of whom enough is known to enable us 
to form a general idea of the course which they followed. 

§ 2. Of these poets several appear to have made use of the links of 
i alogy, in order, like the poet in the Hesiodean catalogues, to string 
together fables which were not connected by any main action, but which 
often extended over many generations. According to Pausanias, the 
works of Cinaethon the Lacedaemonian, who flourished about the 5th 
Olympiad, had a genealogical foundation ; and from the great pleasure 
which the Spartans took in the legends of the heroic age, it is probable 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 101 

that he treated of certain mythical subjects to which a patriotic interest 
was attached. His Heraclea, which is very rarely mentioned, may 
have referred to the descent of the Doric Princes from Hercules ; and 
also his GEdipodia may have been occasioned by the first kings of 
Sparta, Procles and Eurysthenes, being, through their mother, descended 
from the Cadmean kings of Thebes. It is remarkable that the Little 
Iliad, one of the Cyclic poems, which immediately followed Homer, was 
by many* attributed to this Cinaethon ; and another Peloponnesian bard, 
Eumelus the Corinthian, was named as the author of a second Cyclic Epos, 
the Nostoi. Both statements are probably erroneous ; at least the authors 
of these poems must, as members of that school who imitated and extended 
the Homeric Epopees, have adopted an entirely different style of com- 
position from that required for the genealogical collections of Pelopon- 
nesian legends. Eumelus was a Corinthian of the noble and governing 
house of the Bacchaids, and he lived about the time of the founding of 
Syracuse (4th Olympiad, according to the commonly received date). 
There were poems extant under his name, of the genealogical and his- 
torical kind ; by which, however, is not to be understood the later style 
of converting the marvels of the mythical period into common history, 
but only a narrative of the legends of some town or race, arranged in 
order of time. Of this character (as appears also from fragments) were 
the Corinthiaca of Eumelus, and also, probably, the Europia, in which 
perhaps a number of ancient legends were joined to the genealogy of 
Europa. Nevertheless the notion among the ancients of the style of 
Eumelus was not so fixed and clear as to furnish any certain criterion ; 
for there was extant a Titanomachia, as to which Athenaeus doubts whe- 
ther it should be ascribed to Eumelus, the Corinthian, or Aretinus, the 
Milesian. That there should exist any doubt between these two claimants, 
the Cyclic poet who had composed the iEthiopis, and the author of 
genealogical epics, only convinces us how uncertain all literary decisions 
in this period are, and how dangerous a region this is for the inquiries of 
the higher criticism. Pausanias will not allow anything of Eumelus to 
be genuine except a prosodion, or strain, which he had composed for 
the Messenians for a sacred mission to the Temple of Delos ; and it 
is certain that this epic hymn, in the Doric dialect, really belonged to 
those times when Messenia was still independent and flourishing, before 
the first war with the Lacedaemonians, which began in the 9th Olym- 
piadf . Pausanias also ascribes to Eumelus the epic verses in the Doric 

* See Schol. Vatic, ad Eurip. Troad. 822. Eumelus (corrupted into Eumolpus) 
is called the author of the votrroi in Schol. Pind. Olymp. xiii. 31. 
f The passage quoted from it by Pausanias iv. 33, p. 3. 
TZ yot.(> 'iScoftriirec, xarxOvfAios sttXito Mo7trx } 
'A xcc6a.^a. xa.) Iksvfaga acrfAecr (?) i%ov<rx, 
appears to say that the muse of Eumelus, which had composed the Prosodion, 
had also pleased Zeus Ithomatas ; that is, had gained a prize at the musical con- 
tests among the Ithomseans in Messenia. 



HISTORY OF THE 

dialed, Wh*b WW added to illustrate the reliefs on the chest of Cyp- 
selus, the renowned work of ancient art. But it is plain that those 
rerses were contemporaneous with the reliefs themselves, which were not 
made till a century later, under the Government of the Cypselids at 
Corinth*. Asms of Samos, often mentioned by Pausanias, was a third 
genealogical epic poet. His poems referred chiefly to his native coun- 
try, the Ionian island of Samos ; and he appears to have taken occasion 
to descend to Ins own time ; as in the glowing and vivid description of 
the luxurious costume of the Samians at a festival procession to the 
temple of their guardian goddess, Here. Chersias, the epic poet of Orcho- 
menus, collected Boeotian leg-ends and genealogies: he was, according 
to Plutarch, a contemporary of the Seven Wise Men, and appears, from 
the monumental inscription above mentioned, to have been a great 
admirer and follower of Hesiod. 

§ 3. While by efforts of this kind nearly all the heroes (whose remem- 
brance had been preserved in popular legends) obtained a place in 
this endlessly extensive epic literature, it is remarkable that the hero 
on whose name half the heroic mythology of the Greeks depends, to 
whose mighty deeds (in a degree far exceeding those of all the Achaian 
heroes before Troy) every race of the Greeks seem to have contributed 
its share, that Hercules should have been celebrated by no epic poem 
corresponding to his greatness. Even the two Homeric epopees furnish 
some measure of the extent of these legends, and at the same time make 
it probable that it was usual to compose short epic poems from single 
adventures of the wandering hero; and of this kind, probably, was the 
" Taking of OEchalia," which Homer, according to a well-known tra- 
dition, is supposed to have left as a present to a person joined to him by 
ties of hospitality, Creophylus of Samos, who appears to have been the 
head of a Samian family of rhapsodists. The poem narrated how Her- 
cules, in order to avenge an affront early received by him from Eurytus 
and his sons, takes (Echalia, the city of this prince, slays him and his 
sons, and carries off his daughter Iole, as the spoil of war. This fable 
is so far connected with the Odyssey that the bow which Ulysses uses 
against the suitors is derived from this Eurytus, the best archer of his 

* Pausanias proceeds on the supposition that this chest was the very one in which 
the little Cypselus was concealed from the designs of the Bacchiads by his mother 
Labda, which was afterwards, in memory of this event, dedicated by the Cypse- 
lids at Olympia. But not to say that this whole story is not an historial fact, but 
probably arose merely from the etymology of the word Ku-^iXo;, (from xv-^iXr,, a 
chest.) it is quite incredible that a box so costly and so richly adorned with sculp- 
tures should have been used by Labda as an ordinary piece of furniture. It is far 
more probable that the Cypselids, at the time of their power and wealth' (after 
Olymp. 30), had this chest made among other costly offerings, in order to be dedi- 
cated at Olympia, meaning, at the same time, by the name of the chest {xv-^iXyi) 
— quite in the manner of the emblcmes parlans on Greek coins — to allude to themselves 
as donors. Another argument is, that Hercules was distinguished on it by a pecu- 
liar costume (jr%tjfca)j and therefore was not, as in Hesiod's shield, represented in 
the common heroic accoutrements. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 103 

time. This may have been the reason that very early Homerids 
formed of this subject a separate epos, the execution pf which does 
not appear to have been unworthy of the name of Homer. 

Other portions of the legends of Hercules had found a place in the 
larger poems of Hesiod, the Eoisc, the Catalogues, and the short epics ; and 
(iiuethon the Lacedaemonian may have brought forward many legends 
little known before his time. Yet this whole series of legends wanted 
that main feature which every one would now collect from poets and 
works of art. This conception of Hercules could not arise before his 
contests with animals were combined from the local tales separately 
related of him in Peloponnesus, and. were embellished with all the 
ornaments of poetry. Hence, too, he assumed a figure different from 
that of all other heroes, as he no longer seemed to want the brazen 
helmet, breast-plate, and shield, or to require the weapons of heroic 
warfare, but trusting solely to the immense strength of his limbs, and 
simply armed with a club, and covered with the skin of a lion which he 
had slain, he exercises a kind of gymnastic skill in slaying the various 
monsters which he encounters, sometimes exhibiting rapidity in running 
and leaping, sometimes the highest bodily strength in wrestling and 
striking. The poet who first represented Hercules in this manner, and 
thus broke through the monotony of the ordinary heroic combats, was 
Peisander, a Rhodian, from the town of Cameirus, who is placed at the 
33d Olympiad, though he probably flourished somewhat later. Nearly 
all the allusions in his Heraclea may be referred to those combats, which 
were considered as the tasks imposed on the hero by Eurystheus, and 
which were properly called 'HpaKXeove adXoi. It is, indeed, very pro- 
bable that Peisander was the first who fixed the number of these labours 
at twelve, a number constantly observed by later writers, though they 
do not always name the same exploits, and which had moreover esta- 
blished itself in art at least as early as the time of Phidias (on the tem- 
ple of Olympia). If the first of these twelve combats have a somewhat 
rural and Idyllian character, the later ones afforded scope for bold ima- 
ginations and marvellous tales, which Peisander doubtless knew how to 
turn to account ; as, for example, the story that Hercules, in his expedi- 
tion against Geryon, was carried over the ocean in the goblet of the Sun, 
is first cited from the poem of Peisander. Perhaps he was led to this 
invention by symbols of the worship of the Sun, which existed from early 
times in Rhodes. It was most likely the originality, which prevailed 
with equal power through the whole of this not very long poem, that 
induced the Alexandrian grammarians to receive Peisander, together 
with Homer and Hesiod, into the epic canon, an honour which they 
did not extend to any other of the poets hitherto mentioned. 

Thus the Greek Epos, which seemed, from its genealogical tendency, 
to have acquired a dry and steril character, now appeared once more 
animated with new life, and striking out new paths. Nevertheless it 



l()[ HISTORY OF THE 

,nav be questioned whether the epic poets would have acquired this 
spirit if the) had never moved out of the beaten track of their ancient 
heroic son-', and if other kinds of poetry had not arisen and re- 
vealed to the Greeks the latent poetical character of many other feelings 
and impressions besides those which prevailed in the epos. We now 
turn to those kinds of poetry which first appear as the rivals of the epic 
strains*. 



CHAPTER XI. ' 

§ 1. Exclusive prevalence of Epic Poetry, in connexion with the monarchical period; 
influence of the change in the forms of Government upon Poetry.— § 2. Elegeion, 
its meaning ; origin of Elegos ; plaintive songs of Asia Minor, accompanied by 
the flute ; mode of Recitation of the Elegy.— 6 3. Metre of the Elegy.— 6 4. Po- 
litical and military tendency of the Elegy as composed by Callinus ; the circum- 
stances of his time. — § 5. Tyrtaeus, his Life ; occasion and subject of his Elegy 
of Eunomia. — § 6. Character and mode of recitation of the Elegies of Tyrtaeus. 
§ 7. Elegies of Archilochus, their reference to Banquets ; mixture of convivial jollity 
(Asius). — § 8. Plaintive Elegies of Archilochus. — § 9. Mimnermus ; his Elegies; 
the expression of the impaired strength of the Ionic nation. — § 10. Luxury a 
consolation in this state ; the Nanno of Mimnermus. — § 11. Solon's character; his 
Elegy of Salamis. — 5 12. Elegies before and after Solon's Legislation ; the ex- 
pression of his political feeling; mixture of Gnomic Passages (Phocylides). — 
§ 13. Elegies of Theognis ; their original character. — § 14. Their origin in the 
political Revolutions of Megara. — § 15. Their personal reference to the Friends 
of Theognis. — § 16. Elegies of Xenophanes ; their philosophical tendency. — 
6 17. Elegies of Simonides on the Victories of the Persian War; tender and 
pathetic spirit of his Poetry ; general View of the course of Elegiac Poetry. — 
§ 18. Epigrams iu elegiac form ; their Object and Character; Simonides, as a 
Composer of Epigrams. 

§ 1. Until the beginning of the seventh century before our era, or 
the 20th Olympiad, the epic was the only kind of poetry in Greece, and 
the hexameter the only metre which had been cultivated by the poets 
with art and diligence. Doubtless there were, especially in connexion 
with different worships, strains of other kinds and measures of a lighter 
movement, according to which dances of a sprightly character could be 
executed ; but these as yet did not form a finished style of poetry, and 
were only rude essays and undeveloped germs of other varieties, which 
hitherto had only a local interest, confined to the rites and customs of 
particular districts. In all musical and poetical contests the solemn and 
majestic tone of the epopee and the epic hymn alone prevailed ; and the 
soothing placidity which these lays imparted to the mind was the only 
feeling which had found its satisfactory poetical expression. As yet the 
heart, agitated by joy and grief, by love and anger, could not give utter- 

* Some epic poems of the early period, as the Minyis, J/cmceonis, and Tliesprotia, 
will be noticed in the chapter on the poetry connected with the Mysteries. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 105 

ance to its lament for the lost, its longing- after the absent, its care for 
the present, in appropriate forms of poetical composition. These feel- 
ings were still without the elevation which the beauty of art can alone 
confer. The epopee kept the mind fixed in the contemplation of a 
former generation of heroes, which it could view with sympathy and in- 
terest, but not with passionate emotion. And although in the econo- 
mical poem of Hesiod the cares and sufferings of the present time fur- 
nished the occasion for an epic work, yet this was only a partial descent 
from the lofty career of epic poetry ; for it immediately rose again from 
this lowly region, and taking a survey of things affecting not only the 
entire Greek nation but the whole of mankind, celebrated in solemn 
strains the order of the universe and of social life, as approved by the 
Gods. 

This exclusive prevalence of epic poetry was also doubtless connected 
with the political state of Greece at this time. It has been already re- 
marked* how acceptable the ordinary subjects of the epic poems must 
have been to the princes who derived their race from the heroes of the 
mythical age, as was the case with all the royal families of early times. 
This rule of hereditary princes was the prevailing form of government 
in Greece, at least up to the beginning of the Olympiads, and from this 
period it gradually disappeared ; at an earlier date and by more vio- 
lent revolutions among the Ionians, than among the nations of Pelopon- 
nesus. The republican movements, by which the princely families were 
deprived of their privileges, could not be otherwise than favourable to a 
free expression of the feelings, and in general to a stronger development 
of each man's individuality. Hence the poet, who, in the most perfect 
form of the epos, was completely lost in his subject, and was only the 
mirror in which the grand and brilliant images of the past were reflected, 
now comes before the people as a man with thoughts and objects of his 
own ; and gives a free vent to the struggling emotions of his soul in 
elegiac and iambic strains. As the elegy and the iambus, those two 
contemporary and cognate species of poetry, originated with Ionic poets, 
and (as far as we are aware) with citizens of free states ; so, again, the 
remains and accounts of these styles of poetry furnish the best image of 
the internal condition of the Ionic states of Asia Minor and the Islands 
in the first period of their republican constitution* 

§ 2. The word elegeion, as used by the best writers, like the word 
epos, refers not to the subject of a poem, but simply to its form. In 
general the Greeks, in dividing their poetry into classes, looked almost 
exclusively to its metrical shape ; but in considering the essence of the 
Greek poetry we shall not be compelled to depart from these divisions, 
as the Greek poets always chose their verse with the nicest attention to 
the feelings to be conveyed by the poem. The perfect harmony, the 
accurate correspondence of expression between these multifarious me- 

* Chap.iv. §1,2. 



10(i HISTORY OF THE 

trieal forms and the various states of mind required by the poem, is one 
of the remarkable features of the Grecian poetry, and to which we shall 
frequently have occasion to advert. The word kXtyeiov, therefore, in its 
strict souse, means nothing more than the combination of an hexameter 
and a pentameter, making together a distich ; and an elegeia (eXeyela) 
is a poem made of such verses. The word elegeion is, however, itself 
only a derivation from a simpler word, the use of which brings us nearer 
to the first origin of this kind of poetry. Elegos (k'Aeyoe) means pro- 
perly a strain of lament, without any determinate reference to a metri- 
cal form ; thus, for example, in Aristophanes, the nightingale sings an 
elegos for her lost Itys ; and in Euripides, the halcyon, or kingfisher, 
sings an elegos for her husband Ceyx* ; in both which passages the 
word has this general sense. The origin of the word can hardly be 
Grecian, since all the etymologies of it which have been attempted seem 
very improbable^ ; on the other hand, if it is borne in mind, how cele- 
brated among the Greeks the Carians and Lydians were for laments 
over the dead, and generally for songs of a melancholy cast], it will 
seem likely that the Ionians, together with ditties and tunes of this kind, 
also received the word elegos from their neighbours of Asia Minor. 

However great the interval may have been between these Asiatic 
dirges and the elegy as embellished and ennobled by Grecian taste, 
yet it cannot be doubted that they were in fact connected. Those 
laments of Asia Minor were always accompanied by the flute, which was 
of great antiquity in Phrygia and the neighbouring parts, but which 
was unknown to the Greeks in Homers time, and in Hesiod only occurs 
as used in the boisterous strain of revellers, called Comos§. The elegy, 
on the other hand, is the first regularly cultivated branch of Greek 
poetry, in the recitation of which the flute alone, and neither the cithara 
nor lyre, was employed. The elegiac poet Mimnermus (about Olympiad 
40, 620 b. p.), according to the testimony of Hipponax||, nearly as an- 
cient as himself, played on the flute the KpaoirjQ vofxog ; that is, literally, 
" the fig-branch strain," a peculiar tune, which was played at the Ionic 
festival of Thargelia, when the men appointed to make atonement for 
the sins of the city were driven out with fig branches. Nanno, the 
beloved of Mimnermus, was a flute player, and he, according [to. the 

* Aristoph. Av. 218. Eurip. Iph. Taur. 1061. 
t The most favourite is the derivation from Vi xiytiv : but kiyuv is here an im- 
proper form, and ought in this connexion to be x'oyo;. The entire composition is, 
moreover, very strange. 

{ Carian and Lydian laments are often mentioned in antiquity (Franch Callinus, 
p. 123, seq.); and the antispastic rhythm , in which there is something dis- 
pleasing and harsh, was called xapxog ', which refers to its use in laments of this 
kind. It is also very probable that the word vmla. came from Asia Minor (Pollux 
iv. 79), and was brought by the Tyrrhenians from Lydia to Etruria,and thence to 
Rome. 

§ Above, chap. iii. § 5. 
|) In Plutarch de Musica, c. ix. comp. Hesych. in x.^*'> v °f*°S' 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 107 

expression of a later elegiac poet, himself played on the lotus-wood flute, 
and wore the mouthpiece (the Qoppeia) used by the ancient flute 
players when, together with his mistress, he led a comos*. And in en- 
tire agreement with this the elegiac poet Theognis says, that his beloved 
and much praised Cyrnus, carried by him on the wings of poetry oyer 
the whole earth, would be present at all banquets, as young men would 
sing of him eloquently to the clear tone of little flutesf- 

Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that elegies were from the begin- 
ning intended to be sung, and to be recited like lyric poems in the 
narrower sense of the word. Elegies, that is distichs, were doubtless 
accompanied by the flute before varied musical forms were invented for 
them. This did not take place till some time after Terpander the Les- 
bian, who set hexameters to music, to be sung to the cithara, that is, pro- 
bably, not before the 40th Olympiadf. 

When the Amphictyons, after the conquest of Crissa, celebrated the 
Pythian games (Olymp. 47, 3 b.c 590), Echembrotus the Arcadian 
came forward with elegies, which were intended to be sung to the flute : 
these were of a gloomy plaintive character, which appeared to the as- 
sembled Greeks so little in harmony with the feeling of the festival, that 
this kind of musical representations was immediately abandoned^. 
Hence it may be inferred that in early times the elegy was recited rather 
in the style of the Homeric poems, in a lively tone, though probably 
with this difference, that where the Homerid used the cithara, the flute 
was employed, for the purpose of making a short prelude and occasional 
interludes || . The flute, as thus applied, does not appear alien to the 
warlike elegy of Callinus : among the ancients in general the varied 
tones of the flute^[ were not considered as necessarily having a peaceful 
character. Not only did the Lydian armies march to battle, as Hero- 
dotus states, to the sound of flutes, masculine and feminine ; but the 
Spartans formed their military music of a large number of flutes, in- 
stead of the cithara, which had previously been used. From this how- 
ever we are not to suppose that the elegy was ever sung by an army on 
its march, or advance to the fight, for which purpose neither the rhythm 
nor the style of the poetry is at all suited. On the contrary, we shall 

* This, according to the most probable reading, is the meaning of the passage of 

Hermesianax in Athen, xiii., p. 598 A. Kahro ph N«wo«j, vroXtM V It) vroxxdxt 

XcotZ xnftuhts (according to an emendation in the Classical Journal, vii. p. 238) ; 

xapovs (rnrtixi ffuvi%avvoov (the latter words according to SchweighaBuser's rendering). 

f Theognis, v. 237, seq. % Plutarch, de Musica, iii. 4, 8. 

§ Paxisan. x. 7, 3. From the statement of Chamaeleon in Athen. xiv. p. C20, that 
the poems of Mimnermus as well as those of Homer were set to music (/^iX^^vcci) 
it may be inferred that they were not so from the beginning. 

|| Archilochus says nbwi v<r alXyirwgo;, probably in reference to an elegy (Schol. 
Aristoph. Av. 1428) ; and Solon is stated to have recited his elegy of Salamis £$&iv ; 
but in these passages aluv, as in the case of Homer, probably expresses a measured 
style of recitation like that of a rhapsodist : above, ch. iv. § 3 (p. 32). Comp. also 
Philochorus ap. Athen. xiv. 630. 

^[ Iltiftcpuvoi auXo), Pindar. 



|08 HISTORY OF THE 

find in Tynans Archilochus, Xenophanes, Anacreon, and especially in 
Thooirnis, so many instances of the reference of elegiac poetry to ban- 
quets, that we may safely consider the convivial meeting-, and especially 
the latter part of it, called Comos, as the appropriate occasion for the 
Greek elegy*. 

§ 3. That the elegy was not originally intended to make a completely 
different impression from the epic poem, is proved by the slight devia- 
tion of the elegiac metre from the epic hexameter. It seems as if the 
spirit of art, impatient of its narrow limits, made with this metre its first 
timid step out of the hallowed precinct. It does not venture to invent 
new metrical forms, or even to give a new turn to the solemn hexame- 
ter, by annexing to it a metre of a different character : it is contented 
simply to remove the third and the last thesis from every second hexa- 
meter t ; and it is thus able, without destroying the rhythm, to vary the 
form of the metre in a highly agreeable manner. The even and regular 
march of the hexameter is thus accompanied by the feebler and hesi- 
tating gait of the pentameter. At the same time, this alternation pro- 
duces a close union of two verses, which the hexametrical form of the 
epos, with its uninterrupted flow of versification, did not admit; and 
thus gives rise to a kind of small strophes. The influence of this metri- 
cal character upon the structure of the sentences, and the entire tone of 
the language, must evidently have been very great. 

§ 4. Into the fair form of this metre the Ionic poets breathed a soul, 
which was vividly impressed with the passing events, and was driven to 
and fro by the alternate swelling and flowing of a flood of emotions. It 
is by no means necessary that lamentations should form the subject of 
the elegy, still less that it should be the lamentation of love ; but emo- 
tion is always essential to it. Excited by events or circumstances 
of the present time and place, the poet in the circle of his friends 
and countrymen pours forth his heart in a copious description of his 
experience, in the unreserved expression of his fears and hopes, in cen- 
sure and advice. And as the commonwealth was in early times the 
first thought of every Greek, his feelings naturally gave rise to the poli- 
tical and warlike character of the elegy, which we first meet with in the 
poems of Callinus. 

The age of Callinus of Ephesus is chiefly fixed by the allusions 
to the expeditions of the Cimmerians and Treres, which occurred in his 
poems. The history of these incursions is, according to the best ancient 
authorities, as follows : — The nation of the Cimmerians, driven out by 

* The flute is described as used at the Comus in the passage of Hesiod cited 
above, p. 21 (ch. iii. h 5). 

t Thus, in the first lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey, by omitting the thesis of 
the third and sixth feet, a perfect elegiac pentameter is obtained. 

M?v/v aitbi ka.\Ur\\'/{iahiu 'A£<X?,|«5| 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 109 

the Scythians, appeared at the time of Gyges in Asia Minor ; in the 
reign of Ardys (Olymp. 25, 3—37, 4 ; or 678—29 b.c.) they took 
Sardis, the capital of the Lydian kings, with the exception of the 
citadel, and then, under the command of Lygdamis, moved against 
Ionia; where in particular the temple of the Ephesian Artemis was 
threatened by them. Lygdamis perished in Cilicia. The tribe of the 
Treres, who appear to have followed the Cimmerians on their expedi- 
tion, captured Sardis for the second time in union with the Lycians, and 
destroyed Magnesia on the Maeander, which had hitherto been a 
flourishing city, and, with occasional reverses, had on the whole come 
off superior in its wars with the Ephesians. These Treres, however, 
under their chieftain Cobus, were (according to Strabo) soon driven 
back by the Cimmerians under the guidance of Madys. Halyattes, the 
second successor of Ardys, at last succeeded in driving the Cimmerians 
out of the country, after they had so long occupied it. (Olymp. 40, 4 — 
55, 1 ; 617 — 560 B.C.) Now the lifetime of Callinus stands in relation 
to these events thus : he mentioned the advance of the formidable Cim- 
merians and the destruction of Sardis by them, but described Magnesia 
as still flourishing and as victorious against Ephesus, although he also 
knew of the approach of the Treres*. In such perilous times, when 
the Ephesians were not only threatened with subjugation by their coun- 
trymen in Magnesia, but with a still worse fate from the Cimmerians 
and Treres, there was doubtless no lack of unwonted inducements for 
the exertion of every nerve. But the Ionians were already so softened 
by their long intercourse with the Lydians, a people accustomed to all 
the luxury of Asia, and by the delights of their beautiful country, that 
even on such an occasion as this they would not break through the in- 
dolence of their usual life of enjoyment. It is easy to see how deep 
and painful the emotion must have been with which Callinus thus 
addresses his countrymen : " How long will you lie in sloth ? when will 
you, youths, show a courageous heart ? are you not ashamed that the 
neighbouring nations should see you sunk in this lethargy? You think 
indeed that you are living in peace ; but war overspreads the whole 
earthf." 

The fragment which begins with the expressions just cited, the only 

* Two fragments of Callinus prove this— 

Nt/v o It) Ki/tptgiav errpecros zg%trcci ofytftosgyuv, 
and 

TjivgiM? ecvo^x; ccyuv. 
Everything else stated in the text is taken from the precise accounts of Herodotus 
and Strabo. Pliny's story of the picture of Bularchus " Magnetum excidium" 
being bought for an equal weight of gold by Candaules, the predecessor of Gyges, 
must be erroneous. Probably some other Lydian named Candaules is confounded 
with the old king. 

f Gaisford Poetse Minores, vol. i. p. 426« 



110 HISTORY OP THE 

considerable remnant of Callinus; and even that an imperfect one*, is 
highly interesting as the first specimen of a kind of poetry in which so 
much was afterwards composed both by u Greeks and Romans. In 
general the character of the elegy may be recognized, as it was deter- 
mined by the metre, and as it remained throughout the entire literature 
of antiquity. The elegy is honest and straightforward in its expression ; 
it marks all the parts of its picture with strong touches, and is fond of 
heightening the effect of its images by contrast. Thus in the verses just 
quoted Callinus opposes the renown of the brave to the obscurity of cow- 
ards. The pentameter itself, being a subordinate part of the metre, 
naturally leads to an expansion of the original thought by supplemen- 
tary or explanatory clauses. This diffuseness of expression, combined 
with the excited tone of the sentiment, always gives the elegy a certain 
degree of feebleness which is perceptible even in the martial songs of 
Callinus and Tyrtaeus. On the other hand, it is to be observed that the 
elegy of Callinus still retains much of the fuller tone of the epic style ; 
it does not, like the shorter breath of later elegies, confine itself within 
the narrow limits of a distich, and require a pause at the end of every 
pentameter ; but Callinus in many cases comprehends several hexame- 
ters and pentameters in one period, without caring for the limits of the 
verses ; in which respect the earlier elegiac poets of Greece generally 
imitated him. 

§ 5. With Callinus we will connect his contemporary Tyrtjeus, pro- 
bably a few years younger than himself. The age of Tyrtseus is deter- 
mined by the second Messenian war, in which he bore a part. If with 
Pausanias this war is placed between Olymp. 23. 4, and 28. 1 (635 and 
668 b. c), Tyrtaeus would fall at the same time as, or even earlier than, 
the circumstances of the Cimmerian invasion mentioned by Callinus ; 
and we should then expect to find that Tyrtaeus, and not Callinus, was 
considered by the ancients as the originator of the elegy. As the 
reverse is the fact, this reason may be added to others for thinking that 
the second Messenian war did not take place till after the 30th Olym- 
piad (660 b.c), which must be considered as the period at which Callinus 
flourished. 

We certainly do not give implicit credit to the story of later writers 
that Tyrtaeus was a lame schoolmaster at Athens, sent out of insolence 
by the Athenians to the Spartans, who at the command of an oracle had 
applied to them for a leader in the Messenian war. So much of this 
account may, however, be received as true, that Tyrtseus came from 
Attica to the Lacedaemonians ; the place of his abode being, according 
to a precise statement, Aphidnae, an Athenian town, which is placed by 
the legends about the Dioscuri in very early connexion with Laconia. 

* It is even doubtful whether the part of this elegiac fragment in Stobaeus which 
follows the hiatus, in fact belongs to Callinus, or whether the name of Tyrtaeus has 
not fallen out. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. Ill 

If Tyrtseus came from Attica, it is easy to understand how the elegiac 
metre which had its origin in Ionia should have been used by him, ami 
that in the very style of Callihus. Athens was so closely connected 
with her Ionic colonies, that this new kind of poetry must have been 
soon known in the mother city. This circumstance would be far 
more inexplicable if Tyrtseus had been a Lacedaemonian by birth, as 
was stated vaguely by some ancient authors. For although Sparta was 
not at this period a stranger to the efforts of the other Greeks in poetry 
and music, yet the Spartans with their peuliar modes of thinking would 
not have been very ready to appropriate the new invention of the 
Ionians. 

Tyrtseus came to the Lacedaemonians at a time when they were not 
only brought into great straits from without by the boldness of Aristo- 
menes, and the desperate courage of the Messenians, but the state was 
also rent with internal discord. The dissensions were caused by those 
Spartans who had owned lands in the conquered Messenia : now that the 
Messenians had risen against their conquerors, these lands were either in 
the hands of the enemy, or were left untilled from fear that the enemy 
would reap their produce ; and hence the proprietors of them demanded 
with vehemence a new division of lands — the most dangerous and 
dreadful of all measures in the ancient republics. In this condition of 
the Spartan commonwealth Tyrtseus composed the most celebrated of his 
elegies, which, from its subject, was called Euno?nia, that is, " Justice," 
or " Good Government," (also Politeia, or " The Constitution")* 
is not difficult, on considering attentively the character of the early 
Greek elegy, to form an idea of the manner in which Tyrtteus probably 
handled this subject. He doubtless began with remarking the anarchi- 
cal movement among the Spartan citizens, and by expressing the con- 
cern with which he viewed it. But as in general the elegy seeks to 
pass from an excited state of the mind through sentiments and images 
of a miscellaneous description to a state of calmness and tranquillity, it 
may be conjectured that the poet in the Eunomia made this transition 
by drawing a picture of the well-regulated constitution of Sparta, and 
the legal existence of its citizens, which, founded with the divine assist- 
ance, ought not to be destroyed by the threatened innovations ; and that 
at the same time he reminded the Spartans, who had been deprived of 
their lands by the Messenian war, that on their courage would depend 
the recovery of their possessions and the restoration of the former pros- 
perity of the state. This view is entirely confirmed by the fragments 
of Tyrtseus, some of which are distinctly stated to belong to the Euno- 
mia. In these the constitution of Sparta is extolled, as being founded 
by the power of the Gods ; Zeus himself having given the country to 
the Heracleids, and the power having been distributed in the justest 
manner, according to the oracles of the Pythian Apollo, among the 
kings, the gerons in the council, and the men of the commonalty in the 
popular assembly. 



/ 



112 HISTORY OF THE 

§ 6. But the Eunomia was neither the only nor yet the first elegy in 
which TyrtKUS stimulated the Lacedaemonians to a bold defence against 
the Messenians. Exhortation to bravery was the theme which this poet 
took for many elegies*, and wrote on it with unceasing spirit and ever- 
new invention. Never was the duty and the honour of bravery im- 
pressed on the youth of a nation with so much beauty and force of 
language, by such natural and touching motives. In this we perceive 
the talent of the Greeks for giving to an idea the outward and visible 
form most befitting it. In the poems of Tyrtaeus we see before us 
the determined hoplite firmly fixed to the earth, with feet apart, 
pressing his lips with his teeth, holding his large shield against the 
darts of the distant enemy, and stretching out his spear with a strong 
hand against the nearer combatant. That the young, and even the old, 
rise up and yield their places to the brave ; that it beseems the youthful 
warrior to fall in the thick of the fight, as his form is beautiful even in 
death, while the aged man who is slain in the first ranks is a disgrace to 
his younger companion from the unseemly appearance of his body : 
these and similar topics are incentives to valour which could not fail to 
make a profound impression on a people of fresh feeling and simple 
character, such as the Spartans then were. 

That these poems (although the author of them was a foreigner) 
breathed a truly Spartan spirit, and that the Spartans knew how to value 
them, is proved by the constant use made of them in the military expe- 
ditions. When the Spartans were on a campaign, it was their custom, 
after the evening meal, when the paean had been sung in honour of the 
Gods, to recite these elegies. On these occasions the whole mass did not 
join in the chant, but individuals vied with each other in repeat- 
ing the verses in a manner worthy of their subject. The successful 
competitor then received from the polemarch or commander a larger 
portion of meat than the others, a distinction suitable to the simple taste 
of the Spartans. This kind of recitation was so well adapted to the 
elegy, that it is highly probable that Tyrtoeus himself first published his 
elegies in this manner. The moderation and chastised enjoyment of a 
Spartan banquet were indeed requisite, in order to enable the guests to 
take pleasure in so serious and masculine a style of poetry : among 
guests of other races the elegy placed in analogous circumstances natu- 
rally assumed a very different tone. The elegies of Tyrtaeus were, how- 
ever, never sung on the march of the army and in the battle itself; for 
these a strain of another kind was composed by the same poet, viz., the 
anapaestic marches, to which we shall incidentally revert hereafter. 

§ 7. After these two ancient masters of the warlike elegy, we shall pass 
to two other nearly contemporary poets, who have this characteristic in 
common, that they distinguish themselves still more in iambic than in 

* Called' r<ro6«K«.i V Iktyttat (Suidas) i. e. Lessons and exhortations in elegiac 
verse. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 113 

elegiac poetry. Henceforward this union often appears : the same poet 
who employs the elegy to express his joyous and melancholy emotions, 
has recourse to the iambus where his cool sense prompts him to censure 
the follies of mankind. This relation of the two metres in question is 
perceptible in the two earliest iambic poets, Archilochus and Simo- 
nides or Amorgus. The elegies of Archilochus (of which considerable 
fragments are extant, while of Simonides we only know that he com- 
posed elegies) had nothing of that bitter spirit of which his iambics were 
full, but they contain the frank expression of a mind powerfully affected 
by outward circumstances. Probably these circumstances were in great 
part connected with the migration of Archilochus from Paros to Thasos, 
which by no means fulfilled his expectations, as his iambics show. Nor 
are his elegies quite wanting in the warlike spirit of Callinus. Archi- 
lochus calls himself the servant of the God of War and the disciple of 
the Muses*; and praises the mode of fighting of the brave Abantes in 
Eubcea, who engaged man to man with spear and sword, and not from 
afar with arrows and slings ; perhaps, from its contrast with'the prac- 
tice of their Thracian neighbours who, perhaps, greatly annoyed the colo- 
nists in Thasos by their wild and tumultuary mode of warfare j\ But 
on the other hand, Archilochus avows, without much sense of shame, 
and with an indifference which first throws a light on this part of the 
Ionic character, that one of the Saians (a Thracian tribe, with whom the 
Thasians were often at war) may pride himself in his shield, which he 
had left behind him in some bushes; he has saved his life, and will get 
a shield quite as good some other timej. In other fragments, Archilo- 
chus seeks to banish the recollections of his misfortunes by an appeal to 
steady patience, and by the conviction that all men are equal sufferers ; 
and praises wine as the best antidote to care§. It was evidently very 
natural that from the custom already noticed among the Spartans, of 
singing elegies after drinking parties (<rv/^7r octet), there should arise a 
connexion between the subject of the poem and the occasion on which it 
was sung ; and thus wine and the pleasures of the feast became the sub- 
ject of the elegy. Symposiac elegies of this kind were, at least in later 
times, after the Persian war, also sung at Sparta, in which, with all 
respect for the gods and heroes, the guests were invited to drinking and 
merriment, to the dance and the song ; and, in the genuine Spartan 
feeling, the man was congratulated who had a fair wife at home. | Among 

* Hi/a.) 5' \yu) fogelfuv f&h'EvuuXioio clvaxros 
Ka) Movtrlcov Iparov ^mqov i-rnrrufAtvos. 
f Gaisford, Poet.Gr. Min. frag. 4. J lb. frag. 3. § Frajr. 1, v. 5; and frag. 7. 
|| It is clear that the ele^y of Ion of Chios, the contemporary of Pericies, of 
which Athen. xi. p. 463, has preserved five distichs, was sung in Sparta or in the 
Spartan camp : and moreover, at the royal table (called by Xenophon the lafttxria). 
For Spartans alone could have been exhorted to make libations to Hercules, to Alc- 
mene, to Procles, and to the Perseids. The reason why Procles alone is mentioned, 
without Eurysthenes, (the other ancestor of the kings of Sparta,) can only be that the 
king saluted in the poem (^w^to fip'sngos fiourtXtvs car^ <rt tfxryig re) was a Proclid, 
— that is, from the date, probably, Archidamus. 

I 



1 14 HISTORY OF THE 

the Tomans the elegy naturally took this turn at a much earlier period, 
and all the various feeling-s excited hy the use of wine, in sadness or in 
mirth, were doubtless first expressed in an elegiac form. It is natural 
to expect that the praise of wine was not dissociated from the other orna- 
ment of Ionic symposia, the Heteerse (who, according to Greek manners, 
were chiefly distinguished from virgins or matrons by their participation 
in the banquets of men) ; and there is extant a distich of a symposiac 
elegy of Archilochus, in which " the hospitable Pasiphile, who kindly 
receives all strangers, as a wild fig tree feeds many crows," is ironically 
praised ; in relation to which an anecdote is preserved by Athenseus*. 
This convivial elegy was allowed to collect all the images fitted to drive 
away the cares of life, and to pour a serene hilarity over the mind. 
Hence it is probable that some beautiful verses of the Ionic poet Asius, 
of Samos, (already mentioned among the epic poets,) belonged to a 
poem of this kind ; in which a parasite, forcing himself upon a marriage 
feast, is described with Homeric solemnity and ironical seriousness, as 
the maimed, scarred, and gray-haired adorer of the fragrancy of the kit- 
chen, who comes unbidden, and suddenly appears among the guests a 
hero rising from the mudf . 

§ 8. This joyous tone of the elegy, which sounded in the verses of 
Archilochus, did not however hinder this poet from also employing the 
same metre for strains of lamentation. This application of the elegy 
is so closely connected with its origin from the Asiatic elegies, that it 
probably occurred in the verses of Callinus ; it must have come from 
the Ionic coast to the islands, not from the islands to the Ionic coast. 
An elegy of this kind, however, was not a threnos, or lament for the 
dead, sung by the persons who accompanied the corpse to its burial 
place : more probably it was chanted at the meal (called ireplZenrvov') 
given to the kinsmen after the funeral, in the same manner as elegies 
at other banquets. In Sparta also an elegy was recited at the solemni- 
ties in honour of warriors who had fallen for their country. A distich 
from a poem of this kind, preserved by Plutarch, speaks of those whose 
only happiness either in life or death consisted in fulfilling the duties of 
both. Archilochus was induced by the death of his sister's husband, 
who had perished at sea, to compose an elegy of this description, in 
which he expressed the sentiment that he would feel less sorrow at the 
event if Hephaestus had performed his office upon the head and the 
fair limbs of the dead man, wrapt up in white linen ; that is to say, if 
be land, and had been burnt on a funeral pile J. 

§ 9. Even in the ruins in which the Greek elegy lies before us, it is 
still the best picture of the race among which it chiefly flourished, viz., 

* Fragm. 44. 
f Athen. in. 125. The earliest certain example of parody, to which we will return 
in the next chapter. On Asius, see above, ch. ix. 

X Fragm. 6. 






LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. lib 

the Ionian. In proportion as this race of the Greeks became more un- 
warlike and effeminate, the elegy was diverted from subjects relating to 
public affairs and to struggles for national independence. The elegies 
of Mimnermus were indeed in great part political ; full of allusions to 
the origin and early history of his native city, and not devoid of the ex- 
pression of noble feelings of military honour ; but these patriotic and 
martial sentiments were mingled with vain regrets and melancholy, 
caused by the subjection of a large part of Ionia, and especially of the 
native city of Mimnermus, to the Lydian yoke. Mimnermus flourished 
from about the 37th Olympiad (634 b. c.) until the age of the Seven 
Wise Men, about Olymp. 45 (600 b. c.) : as it cannot be doubted that 
Solon, in an extant fragment of his poems, addresses Mimnermus, 
as living — " But if you will, even now, take my advice, erase this ; nor 
bear me any ill-will for having thought on this subject better than you ; 
alter the words, Ligyastades, and sing — May the fate of death reach me 
in my sixtieth year" (and not as Mimnermus wished, in his eightieth*}. 
Consequently the lifetime of Mimnermus, compared with the reigns of 
the Lydian kings, falls in the short reign of Sadyattes and the first part 
of the longreign of Hal yattes, which begins in Olymp. 40, 4, b. c. 617. 
The native city of Mimnermus was Smyrna, which had at that time long 
been a colony of the Ionic city Colophonf. Mimnermus, in an extant 
fragment of his elegy Nanno, calls himself one of the colonists of 
Smyrna, who came from Colophon, and whose ancestors at a still earlier 
period came from the Nelean Pylos. Now Herodotus, in his accounts 
of the enterprises of the Lydian kings, states that Gyges made war upon 
Smyrna, but did not succeed in taking it, as he did with Colophon. 
Halyattes, however, at length overcame Smyrna in the early part of 
his reign J. Smyrna, therefore, together with a considerable part of 
Ionia, lost its independence during the lifetime of Mimnermus, and lost 
it for ever, unless we consider the title of allies, which Athens gave to 
its subjects, or the nominal libertas with which Rome honoured many 
cities in this region, as marks of independent sovereignty. It is im- 
portant to form a clear conception of this time, when a people of a noble 
nature, capable of great resolutions and endued with a lively and sus- 

* 'AXX'e/ fjuoi xcu vuv 'in tfzicriai, s|sXs rovrc, f*.'/)Vz p.zyccip', on tnv Xu'i'ov ityguffufiyv, 
xa) {tzruToiwrov, Aiyvatrroi^yi, uli B' cities, &C. The emendation of Aiyvonrrci^t} for 
ayviaa-ra.}} is due to a young German philologist. It is rendered highly probable 
by the comparison of Suidas in Mipvegpos. This familiar address completes the 
proof that Mimnermus was then still living. 

f On the relations of Colophon and Smyrna ; see above, ch. v. § 2. 

% This appears first, because Herodotus, 1. 16, mentions this conquest imme- 
diately after the battle with Cyaxares (who died 594 b.c.) and the expulsion of the 
Cimmerians; secondly, because, according to Strabo, xiv. p. 646, Smyrna, having 
been divided into separate villages by the Lydians, remained in that state for 400 
years, until the time of Antigonus. From this it seems that Smyrna fell into the 
hands of the Lydians before 600 b. c.jj even in that case the period cannot have 
amounted to more than 300 years. 

i 2 



11(3 HISTORY OF THE 

vquible temperament, but wanting- in the power of steady resistance and 
resolute union, bids a half melancholy, half indifferent, farewell to liberty ; 
it is important, I repeat, to form a clear conception of this time and 
this people, in order to gain a correct understanding of the poetical 
character of Mimnermus. He too could take joy in valorous deeds, and 
wrote an elegy in honour of the early battle of the Smyrneeans against 
Gyges and the Lydians, whose attack was then (as we have already 
stated) successfully repulsed. Pausanias, who had himself read this 
elegy*, evidently quotes from it* a particular event of this war in question, 
viz., that the Lydians had, on this occasion, actually made an entrance 
into the town, but that they were driven out of it by the bravery of the 
Smyrnaeans. To this elegy also doubtless belongs the fragment (pre- 
served by Stobeeus), in which an Ionian warrior is praised, who drove 
before him the light squadrons of the mounted Lydians on the plain of 
the Hermus (that is in the neighbourhood of Smyrna), and in whose 
firm valour Pallas Athene herself could find nothing to blame when he 
broke through the first ranks on the bloody battle-field. As in these 
lines the poet refers to what he had heard from his predecessors, who 
had themselves witnessed the hero's exploits, it is probable that this 
brave Smyrnaean lived about two generations before the period at which 
Mimnermus flourished — that is precisely in the time of Gyges. As the 
poet, at the outset of this fragment, says — " Not such, as I hear, was 
the courage and spirit of that warrior," &c.|, we may conjecture that 
the bravery of this ancient Smyrnsean was contrasted with the effemi- 
nacy and softness of the actual generation. It seems, however, that 
Mimnermus sought rather to work upon his countrymen by a melan- 
choly retrospect of this kind, than to stimulate them to energetic deeds 
of valour by inspiriting appeals after the manner of Callinus and 
Tyrtaeus: nothing of this kind is cited from his poems. 

§ 10. On the other hand, both the statements of the ancients and the 
extant fragments, show that Mimnermus recommended, as the only 
consolation in all these calamities and reverses, the enjoyment of the 
best part of life, and particularly love, which the gods had given as the 
only compensation for human ills. These sentiments were expressed in 
his celebrated elegy of Nanno, the most ancient erotic elegy of antiquity, 
which took its name from a beautiful and much-loved flute player. Yet 
even this elegy had contained allusions to political events: thus it 
lamented how Smyrna had always been an apple of discord to the neigh- 
bouring nations, and then proceeded with the verses already cited on the 
taking of the city by the Colophonians§ : the founder of Colophon, An- 
drsemon of Pylos, was also mentioned in it. But all these reflections 
on the past and present fortunes of the city were evidently intended only 
to recommend the enjoyment of the passing hour, as life was only worth 

* ix. 29. f iv. SI. ♦ Fragra. 11. ad Gaisford. § Fragm. 9. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 117 

having' while it could be devoted to love, before unseemly and anxious 
old age comes on*. These ideas, which have since been so often re- 
peated, are expressed by Mimnermus with almost irresistible grace. The 
beauty of youth and love appears with the greater charm when accom- 
panied with the impression of its caducity, and the images of joy stand 
out in the more vivid light as contrasted with the shadows of deep-seated 
inelancholyt. 

§11. With this soft Ionian, who even compassionates the God of the 
Sun for the toils which he must endure in order to illuminate the eartht, 
Solon the Athenian forms an interesting contrast. Solon was a man 
of the genuine Athenian stamp, and for that reason fitted to produce by 
his laws a permanent influence on the public and private life of his coun- 
trymen. In his character were combined the freedom and susceptibility 
of the Asiatic Ionian, with the energy and firmness of purpose which 
marked the Athenian. By the former amiable and liberal tendencies 
he was led to favour a system of " live and let live," which so strongly 
distinguishes his legislation from the severe discipline of the Spartan 
constitutions : by the latter he was enabled to pursue his proposed ends 
with unremitting constancy. Hence, too, the elegy of Solon was dedi- 
cated to the service of Mars as well as of the Muses ; and under the 
combined influence of a patriotic disposition like that of Callinus, and 
of a more enlarged view of human nature, there arose poems of which 
the loss cannot be sufficiently lamented. But even the extant fragments 
of them enable us to follow this great and noble-minded man through 
all the chief epochs of his life. 

The elegy of Salamis, which Solon composed about Olymp. 44 (604 
b. c.) had evidently more of the fire of youth in it than any other of his 
poems. The remarkable circumstances under which it was written are 
related by the ancients, from Demosthenes downwards, with tolerable 
agreement, in the following manner. The Athenians' had from an 
early period contested the possession of Salamis with the Megarians, and 
the great power of Athens was then so completely in its infancy, that 
they were not able to wrest this island from their Doric neighbours, 
small as was the Megarian territory. The Athenians had suffered so 
many losses in the attempt, that they not only gave up all propositions in 
the popular assembly for the reconquest of Salamis, but even made it 
penal to bring forward such a motion. Under these circumstances, 
Solon one day suddenly appeared in the costume of a herald, with the 
proper cap (w«\/oy) upon his head, having previously spread a report 
that he was mad ; sprang in the place of the popular assembly upon the 

* That the subject of the elegy should not be contest and wai - , but the gifts of 
the Muses and Aphrodite for the embellishment of the banquet, is a sentiment also 
expressed by an Ionian later by two generations (Anacreon of Teos), who himself 
also composed elegies : Ov <pikiu Si xgnrygt tk^k TXtM oho<7roraZ 1 w/^ Ns/xsa no,) ToXspov 
IxKpvoivrx, kiyu. (Athen. xi. p. 463.) 

f Fragg. 1 — 5. J Fragm. 8. 



1 IS HISTORY OF THE 

Mono where the heralds were wont to stand, and sang in an impassioned 
tone in elegy, Which began with these words: — " I myself come as a 
bet&ld from the lovely island of Salamis, using song, the ornament of 
words, and not simple speech, to the people." It is manifest that the 
poet feigned himself to be a herald sent from Salamis, and returned 
from his mission ; by which fiction he was enabled to paint in far live- 
lier colours than he could otherwise have done the hated dominion of the 
Megarians over the island, and the reproaches which many Salaminian 
partizans of Athens vented in secret against the Athenians. He described 
the disgrace which would fall upon the Athenians, if they did not re- 
conquer the island, as intolerable. " In that case (he said) I would 
rather be an inhabitant of the meanest island than of Athens ; for wher- 
ever I might live, the saying would quickly circulate — ' This is one of 
the Athenians who have abandoned Salamis in so cowardly a man- 
ner*.' " And when Solon concluded with the words " Let us go to 
Salamis, to conquer the lovely island, and to wipe out our shame,'' the 
youths of Athens are said to have been seized with so eager a desire of 
fighting, that an expedition against the Megarians of Salamis was un- 
dertaken on the spot, which put the Athenians into possession of the 
island, though they did not retain it without interruption. 

§ 12. A character in many respects similar belongs to the elegy of 
which Demosthenes cites a long passage in his contest with /Eschines 
on the embassy. This, too, is composed in the form of an exhortation 
to the people. " My feelings prompt me (says the poet) to declare to 
the Athenians how much mischief injustice brings over the city, and 
that justice everywhere restores a perfect and harmonious order of 
things." In this elegy Solon laments with bitter regret the evils in the 
political state of the commonwealth, the insolence and rapacity of the 
leaders of the people, i. e. of the popular party, and the misery of the 
poor, many of whom were sold into slavery by the rich, and carried to 
foreign countries. Hence it is clear that this elegy is anterior to Solon's 
legislation, which, as is well known, abolished slavery for debt, and 
made it impossible to deprive an insolvent debtor of his liberty. 
These verses give us a livelier picture of this unhappy period of Athens 
than any historical description. " The misery of the people (says 
Solon) forces itself into every man's house : the doors of the court- yard 
are no longer able to keep it out ; it springs over the lofty wall, and 
finds out the wretch, even if he has fled into the most secret part of 
his dwelling.'' 

But in other of Solon's elegies there is the expression of a subdued and 
tranquil joy at the ameliorations brought about in Athens by his legisla- 
tive measures (Olymp. 46, 3. 594 b. c), by which the holders of property 
and the commonalty had each received their due share of consideration and 

* Fragm. ib. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 119 

power, and both were protected by a firm shield*. But this feeling of 
calm satisfaction was not of long; continuance, as Solou observed and 
soon expressed his opinion in elegies, 4< that the people, in its ignorance, 
was bringing itself under the yoke of a monarch (Pisistratus), and that 
it was not the gods, but the thoughtlessness with which the people put 
the means of obtaining the sovereign power into the hands of Pisistra- 
tus, which had destroyed the liberties of Athens f." 

Solon's elegies were therefore the pure expression of his political feel- 
ings ; a mirror of his patriotic sympathies with the weal and woe of his 
country. They moreover exhibit an excited tone of sentiment in the 
poet, called forth by the warm interest which he takes in the affairs of 
the community, and by the dangers which threaten its welfare. The 
prevailing sentiment is a wide and comprehensive humanity. When 
Solon had occasion to express feelings of a different cast — when he 
placed himself in a hostile attitude towards his countrymen and contem- 
poraries, and used sarcasm and rebuke, he employed not elegiac, but 
iambic and trochaic metres. The elegies of Solon are not indeed quite 
free from complaints and reproaches ; but these flow from the regard 
for the public interests, which animated his poetry. The repose which 
always follows an excited state of the mind, and of which Solon's elegies 
would naturally present the reflection, was found in the expression of 
hopes for the future, of a calm reliance on the gods who had taken 
Athens into their protection, and a serious contemplation of the conse- 
quences of good or evil acts. From his habits of reflection, and of reli- 
ance on his understanding, rather than his feelings, his elegies contained 
more general remarks on human affairs than those of any of his prede- 
cessors. Some considerable passages of this kind have been preserved ; 
one in which he divides human life into periods of seven years, and 
assigns to each its proper physical and mental occupations J; another in 
which the multifarious pursuits of men are described, and their inability 
to command success ; for fate brings good and ill to mortals, and man 
cannot escape from the destiny allotted to him by the gods§. Many 
maxims of a worldly wisdom from Solon's elegies are likewise pre- 
served, in which wealth, and comfort, and sensual enjoyment are 
recommended, but only so far as was, according to Greek notions, con- 
sistent with justice and fear of the gods. On account of these general 
maxims, which are called y^w/iou, sayings or apophthegms, Solon has 
been reckoned among the gnomic poets, and his poems have been 
denominated gnomic elegies. This appellation is so far correct, that the 
gnomic character predominates in Solon's poetry ; nevertheless it is to 
be borne in mind that this calm contemplation of mankind cannot 

* Fragra. 20. 
t Fragg. 18, 19. The fragm. 18 has received an additional distich from Diod. 
Exc. 1. vii. — x. in Mai Script, vit. Nov. Coll, vol. ii. p. 21. 

I Fragm. 14, § Fragm. 5. 



|20 HISTORY OF THE 

alone constitute an elegy. For the unimpassioned enunciation of moral 
Sentences, the hexameter remained the most suitable form: hence the 
sayings of 1'hocylides of Miletus (about Olymp. 60. b.c. 540), with 
the perpetually recurring introduction "This, too, is a saying of Phocy- 
lides" appear, from the genuine remnants of them, to have consisted 
only of hexameters*. 

§ 13. The remains of Theognis, on the other hand, belong both in 
matter and form to the elegy properly so called, although in all that 
respects their connexion and their character as works of art, they have 
come down to us in so unintelligible a shape, that at first sight the most 
copious remains of any Greek elegiac poet that we possess — for more 
than 1400 verses are preserved under the name of Theognis — would 
seem to throw less light on the character of the Greek elegy than the 
much scantier fragments of Solon and Tyrta?us. It appears that from 
the time of Xenophon, Theognis was considered chiefly as a teacher of 
wisdom and virtue, and that those parts of his writings which had a 
general application were far more prized than those which referred to 
some particular occasion. When, therefore, in later times it became 
the fashion to extract the general remarks and apophthegms from the 
poets, everything was rejected from Theognis, by which his elegies 
were limited to particular situations, or obtained an individual colour- 
ing ; and the gnojnology or collection of apophthegms was formed, 
which, after various revisions and the interpolation of some fragments 
of other elegiac poets, is still extant. We know, however, that Theog- 
nis composed complete elegies, especially one to the Sicilian Megari- 
ans, who escaped with their lives at the siege of Megara by Gelon 
(Olymp. 74, 2. 4S3 b. c.) ; and the gnomic fragments themselves 
exhibit in numerous places the traces of poems which were composed for 
particular objects, and which on the whole could not have been very 
different from the elegies of Tyrtaeus, Archilochus, and Solon. As in 
these poems of Theognis there is a perpetual reference to political sub- 
jects, it will be necessary first to cast a glance at the condition of 
Megara in his time. 

§ 14. Megara, the Doric neighbour of Athens, had, after its separation 
from Corinth, remained for a long time under the undisturbed domi- 
nion of a Doric nobility, which founded its claim to the exercise of the 
sovereign power both on its descent, and its possession of large landed 
estates. But before the legislation of Solon, Theagenes had raised him- 
self to absolute power over the Megarians by pretending to espouse 

* Two distichs cited under the name of Phocylides, in which in the first person 
he expresses warmth and fidelity to friends, are probably the fragment of an elegy. 
On the other hand, there is a distich which has the appearance of a jocular appendix 
to the yyvpx,, almost of a self-parcdy : — 

Km Tih i'uxvX'ihu' Aigioi xaxoi' ov% o fitv, o; 3' oil' 
TlatrtS, ir>.hv IlgoKXiev:, xat Tl^orXivs Aioiog. 

(Gaisford, fragm. 5.; 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 121 

the popular cause. After he had been overthrown, the aristocracy was 
restored, but only for a short period, as the commons rose with vio- 
lence against the nobles, and founded a democracy, which however led 
to such a state of anarchy, that the expelled nobles found the means of 
regaining* their lost power. Now the poetry of Theognis, so far as its 
political character extends, evidently falls in the beginning of this 
democracy, probably nearer to the 70th (500 b. c.) than the 60th 
Olympiad (540 b.c.) : for Theognis, although according to the ancient 
accounts he was born before the 60th Olympiad, yet from his own verses 
appears to have lived to the. Persian war (Olymp. 75. 480 b. a). Re- 
volutions of this kind were in the ancient Greek states usually accom- 
panied with divisions of the large landed estates among the commons ; 
and by a fresh partition of the Megarian territory, made by the 
democratic party, Theognis, who happened to be absent on a voyage, 
was deprived of the rich heritage of his ancestors. Hence he longs for 
vengeance on the men who had spoiled him of his property, while he 
himself had only escaped with his life ; like a dog who throws every thing 
away in order to cross a torrent *, and the cry of the crane, which gives 
warning of the season of tillage, reminds him of his fertile fields now in 
other men's hands f. These fragments are therefore full of allusions to 
the violent political measures which in Greece usually accompanied the 
accession of the democratic party to power. One of the principal 
changes on such occasions was commonly the adoption into the sove- 
reign community of Periccci, that is, cultivators who were before excluded 
from all share in the government. Of this Theognis says J, " Cyrnus, 
this city is still the city, but a different people are in it, who formerly 
knew nothing of courts of justice and laws, but wore their country dress 
of goat skins at their work, and like timid deer dwelt at a distance from 
the town. And now they are the better class ; and those who were 
formerly noble are now the mean : who can endure to see these 
things ?" The expressions good and bad men (ayaflot, evOXol and 
Kaicoly t)a\ot), which in later times bore a purely moral signification, are 
evidently used by Theognis in a political sense for nobles and commons ; 
or rather his use of these words rests in fact upon the supposition that a 
brave spirit and honourable conduct can be expected only of men de- 
scended from a family long tried in peace and war. Hence his chief 
complaint is, that the good man, that is, the noble, is now of no account 
as compared with the rich man ; and that wealth is the only object of 
all. " They honour riches, and thus the good marries the daughter of 
the bad, and the bad marries the daughter of the good : wealth cor- 
rupts the blood§. Hence, son of Polypas, do not wonder if the race of 
the citizens loses its brightness, for good and bad are confounded to^e- 

* v. 345, seq. ed.Bekker. f v. 1297, seq. J 53, seq. 



100 HISTORY OF THE 

ther *."' Tlieo"*nis doubtless made this complaint on the debasement of 
the Megarian nobility with the stronger feeling of bitterness, as he him- 
self'had been rejected by the parents of a young woman, whom he had 
desired to marry, and a far worse man, that is, a man of plebeian blood, 
had been preferred to himf- Yet the girl herself was captivated with 
the noble descent of Theognis : she hated her ignoble husband, and 
came disguised to the poet, " with the lightness of a little bird," as he 
says X . 

With regard to the union of these fragments into entire elegies, it is 
important to remark that all the complaints, warnings, and lessons 
having a political reference, appear to be addressed to a single young 
friend of the poet, Cyrnus, the son of Polypas §. Wherever other 
names occur, either the subject is quite different, or it is at least treated 
in a different manner. Thus there is a considerable fragment of an 
elegy addressed by Theognis to a friend named Simonides, at the time 
of the revolution, which in the poems addressed to Cyrnus is described 
as passed by. In this passage the insurrection is described under the 
favourite image of a ship tossed about by winds and waves, while the 
crew have deposed the skilful steersman, and entrusted the guidance of 
the helm to the common working sailor. " Let this (the poet adds) be 
revealed to the good in enigmatic language ; yet a bad man may under- 
stand it, if he has sense." It is manifest that this poem was composed 
during a reign of terror, which checked the freedom of speech ; on the 
other hand, in the poems addressed to Cyrnus, Theognis openly dis- 
plays all his opinions and feelings. So far is he from concealing his 
hatred of the popular party, that he wishes that he could drink the 
blood of those who had deprived him of his property ||. 

§ 15. On attempting to ascertain more precisely the relation of Cyrnus 
to Theognis, it appears that the son of Polypas was a youth of noble 
family, to whom Theognis bore a tender, but at the same time paternal, 
regard, and whom he desires to see a " good " citizen, in his sense of 
the word. The interest felt by the poet in Cyrnus probably appeared 
much more clearly in the complete elegies than in the gnomic extracts 
now preserved, in which the address to Cyrnus might appear a mere 
superfluity. Several passages have, however, been preserved, in which 
the true state of his relation to Theognis is apparent. " Cyrnus^[ (says 
the poet) when evil befals you, we all weep ; but grief for others is with 

* V. 189, seq. f v. 261, seq. \ V. 1091. 

h Elmsley has remarked that TlokwrA is to be read as a patronymic. The 
remark is certain, as Uo'A-j7ra.ilyi never occurs before a consonant, but nine times be- 
fore a vowel, and moreover in passages where the verse requires a dactyl. The 
exhortations with the addresses K%= and TloXvvatiyi are also closely connected. 
*o>.v*a. s (with the long u ) has the same meaning as -zokv^^v, a rich proprietor. 

II In v. G67— 32 there is a manifest allusion to the ynkwlcwpk in the verses 

Acurpo; VqvkW 'l<ro$ ylyvirKt I; to fAitrov. 
% v. 349. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 123 

you only a transient feeling*." " I have given you wing's, with which 
you will fly over sea and land, and will be present at all banquets, as 
young men will sing of you to the flute. Even in future times your 
name will be dear to all the lovers of song, so long as the earth and sun 
endure. But to me you shew but little respect, deceiving me with 
words like a little boy f." It is plain that Cyrnus did not place in 
Theognis that entire confidence which the poet desired. It cannot, 
however, be doubted that these affectionate appeals and tender re- 
proaches are to be taken in the sense of the earlier and pure Doric cus- 
tom, and that no connexion of a criminal nature is to be understood, 
with which it would be inconsistent that the poet recommends a married 
life to the youth J. Cyrnus also is sufficiently old to be sent as a sacred 
envoy (dewpbg) to Delphi, in order to bring back an oracle to the city. 
The poet exhorts him to preserve it faithfully, and not to add or to omit 
a word §. 

The poems of Theognis, even in the form in which they are extant, 
place us in the middle of a circle of friends, who formed a kind of eat- 
ing society, like the philitia of Sparta, and like the ancient public tables 
of Megara itself. The Spartan public tables are described to us as a 
kind of aristocratic clubs ; and these societies in Megara might serve to 
awaken and keep alive an aristocratic disposition. Theognis himself 
thinks that those who, according to the original constitution of Megara, 
possessed the chief power, were the only persons with whom any one 
ought to eat and drink, and to sit, and whom he should strive to please ||. 
It is therefore manifest that all the friends whom Theognis names, not 
only Cyrnus and Simonides, but also Onomacritus, Clearistus, Demo- 
cles, Demonax, and Timagoras, belonged to the class of the " good, " 
although the political maxims are only addressed to Cyrnus. Various 
events in the Jives of these friends, or the qualities which each shewed 
at their convivial meetings, furnished occasions for separate, but probably 
short elegies. In one the poet laments that Clearistus should have made 
an unfortunate voyage, and promises him the assistance which is due to 
one connected with his family by ancient ties of hospitality^ : in ano- 
ther he wishes a happy voyage to the same or another friend **. To 
Simonides, as being the chief of the society, he addresses a farewell 
elegy, exhorting him to leave to every guest his liberty, not to detain any 
one desirous to depart, or to waken the sleeping, &c.tt; and to Onoma- 
critus the poet laments over the consequences of inordinate drinking JJ. 
Few of the persons whom he addresses appear to have been without 
this circle of friends, although his fame had even in his lifetime spread 

* v. 653, seq. f v. 237, seq. \ v. 1225. 

§ v. 805, seq. || v. 3S,seq. ^ v. r oll, seq. ** v. 691, seq. 

ff v. 469, seq. U v. 305, seq. 



]0.| ' HISTORY OF THE 

far beyond Mcgara, by means of his travels as well as of his poetry ; 
ami his elegies were sung in many symposia* 

The poetry of Theognis is full of allusions to symposia : so that from 
it ■ clear conception of the outward accompaniments of the elegy may 
be formed. When the guests were satisfied with eating, the cups were 
filled for the solemn libation ; and at this ceremony a prayer was offered 
to the gods, especially to Apollo, which in many districts of Greece was 
expanded into a poean. Here began the more joyous and noisy part of 
the banquet, which Theognis (as well as Pindar) calls in general 
kwjuoc, although this word in a narrower sense also signified the tumul- 
tuous throng of the guests departing from the feast t. Now the Comos 
was usually accompanied with the flute \ : hence Theognis speaks in so 
many places of the accompaniment of the flute-player to the poems sung 
in the intervals of drinking § ; while the lyre and cithara (or phorminx) 
are rarely mentioned, and then chiefly in reference to the song at the 
libation ||. And this was the appropriate occasion for the elegy, which 
was sung by one of the guests to the sound of a flute, being either 
addressed to the company at large, or (as is always the case in Theognis) 
to a single guest. 

§ 16. We have next to speak of the poems of a man different in his 
character from any of the elegiac poets hitherto treated of; a philoso- 
pher, whose metaphysical speculations will be considered in a future 
chapter. Xenophanes of Colophon, who about the 68th Olympiad 
(508 b. c.) founded the celebrated school of Elea, at an earlier period, 
while he was still living at Colophon, gave vent to his thoughts and 
feelings on the circumstances surrounding him, in the form of elegies^]". 
These elegies, like those of Archilochus, Solon, Theognis, &c. were 
symposiac : there is preserved in Athenaeus a considerable fragment, in 
which the beginning of a symposion is described with much distinctness 
and elegance, and the guests are exhorted, after the libation and song 
of praise to the gods, to celebrate over their cups brave deeds and the 
exploits of youths (i. e. in elegiac strains) ; and not to sing the fictions 

* Theognis himself mentions that he had been in Sicily, Euboea, and Sparta, v. 
387, seq. In Sicily he composed the elegy for his countrymen, which has been men- 
tioned ia the text, the colonists from Megara ofMegara Hyblaea. The verses 891 — 4 
must have been written in Eubcea. Many allusions to Sparta occur, and the pas- 
sage v. 880 — 4 is probably from an elegy written by Theognis for a Spartan friend, 
who had a vineyard on Taygetus. The most difficult of explanation are v. 1200 and 
1211, seq., which can scarcely be reconciled with the circumstances of the life of 
Theognis. 

| SeeTheogn. v. 829,940, 1046, 1065, 1207. 
I See above p. 21. 

§ v. 241, 761, 825, 941, 975, 1041, 1056, 1065. 
|| v. 534, 761, 791. 
*[ There are, however, in Diogenes Laertius elegiac verses of Xenophanes, in 
which he states himself to be ninety-two years old, and speaks of his wanderings 
in Greece. 






LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 125 

of ancient poets on the battles of Titans, or giants, or centaurs, and such 
like stories. From this it is evident that Xenophanes took no pleasure in 
the ordinary amusements at the banquets of his countrymen ; and from 
other fragments of the same writer, it also appears that he viewed the 
life of the Greeks with the eye of a philosopher. Not only does he blame 
the luxury of the Colophonians, which they had learnt from the 
Lydians*, but also the folly of the Greeks in valuing- an athlete who had 
been victorious at Olympia in running or wrestling, higher than the 
wise man ; a judgment which, however reasonable in our eyes, must 
have seemed exceedingly perverse to the Greeks of his days. 

§ 17. As we intend in this chapter to bring down the history of the 
elegy to the Persian war, we must also mention Simonides of Ceos, the 
renowned lyric poet, the early contemporary of Pindar and iEschylus, 
and so distinguished in elegy that he must be included among the great 
masters of the elegiac song. Simonides is stated to have been vic- 
torious at Athens over iEschylus himself, in an elegy in honour of those 
who fell at Marathon (Olymp. 72, 3 ; 490 b. a), the Athenians having 
instituted a contest of the chief poets. The ancient biographer of M&- 
chylus, who gives this account, adds in explanation, that the elegy re- 
quires a tenderness of feeling which was foreign to the character of 
iEschylus. To what a degree Simonides possessed this quality, and in 
general how great a master he was of the pathetic is proved by his cele- 
brated lyric piece containing the lament of Danae, and by other remains 
of his poetry. Probably, also, in the elegies upon those who died at 
Marathon and at Platsea, he did not omit to bewail the death of so many 
brave men, and to introduce the sorrows of the widows and orphans, 
which was quite consistent with a lofty patriotic tone, particularly at the 
end of the poem. Simonides likewise, like Archilochus and others, 
used the elegy as a plaintive song for the deaths of individuals ; at least 
the Greek Anthology contains several pieces of Simonides, which appear 
not to be entire epigrams, but fragments of longer elegies lamenting 
with heartfelt pathos the death of persons dear to the poet. Among 
these are the verses concerning Gorgo, who dying, utters these words to 
her mother: — "Remain here with my father, and become with a happier 
fate the mother of another daughter, who may tend you in your old 
age." 

From this example we again see how the elegy in the hands of 
different masters sometimes obtained a softer and more pathetic, and 
sometimes a more manly and robust tone. Nevertheless there is no 
reason for dividing the elegy into different kinds, such as the military, 
political, symposiac, erotic, threnetic, and gnomic ; inasmuch as some of 

* The thousand persons cloathed in purple, who, before the lime of the Ttjrants, 
■were, according to Xenophanes (in Athen. xii. p. 526), together in the market-place, 
formed an aristocratic body among the citizens (ro noXiTivpu) ; such as, at this time 
of transition from the ancient hereditary aristocracies to democracy, also existed in 
lihegium, Locri, Croton, Agrigentum and Cyme in yEolis. 



125 HISTORY OF THE 

the<o characters are at times combined in the same poem. Thus the 
ekgl W«* usuallv, as we have seen, sung at the symposion ; and, in most 
ones, its main subject is political; after which it assumes either an 
amatory, a plaintive, or a sententious tone. At the same time the elegy 
;ihvavs retains its appropriate character, from which it never departs. 
The feeling's of the poet, excited by outward circumstances, seek a vent 
at the symposion, either amidst his friends or sometimes in a larger 
assembly, and assume a poetical form. A free and full expression of the 
poet's sentiments is of the essence of the Greek elegy. This giving a 
vent to the feelings is in itself tranquillizing ; and as the mind disbur- 
dens itself of its alarms and anxieties a more composed state naturally 
ensued, with which the poem closed. PWhen the Greek nation arrived at 
the period at which men began to express in a proverbial form general 
maxims of conduct, — a period beginning with the age of the Seven Wise 
Men, these maxims, or y v&fiai, were the means by which the elegiac poets 
subsided from emotion into calmness. So far the elegy of Solon, Theog- 
nis, and Xenophanes, may be considered as gnomic, although it did not 
therefore assume an essentially new character. That in the Alexandrine 
period of literature the elegy assumed a different tone, which was, in 
part, borrowed by the Roman poets, will be shown in a future chapter. 

§ 18. This place is the most convenient for mentioning a subordinate 
kind of poetry, the epigram, as the elegiac form was the best suited to 
it; although there are also epigrams composed in hexameters and other 
metres. The epigram was originally (as its name purports) an inscrip- 
tion on a tombstone, on a votive offering in a temple, or on any other 
object which required explanation. Afterwards, from the analogy of 
these real epigrams, thoughts, excited by the view of any object, and 
which might have served as an inscription, were called epigrams, and 
expressed in the same form. That this form was the elegiac may have 
arisen from the circumstance that epitaphs appeared closely allied with 
laments for the dead, which (as has been already shown) were at an 
early period composed in this metre. However, as this elegy compre- 
hended all the events of life which caused a strong emotion, so the 
epigram might be equally in place on a monument of war, and on the 
sepulchral pillar of a beloved kinsman or friend. It is true that the 
mere statement of the purpose and meaning of the object,— for exam- 
ple, in a sacred offering, the person who gave it, the god to whom it was 
dedicated, and the subject which it represented — was much prized, if 
made with conciseness and elegance. ; and epigrams of this kind were 
often ascribed to renowned poets, in which there is no excellence 
besides the brevity and completeness of these statements, and the per- 
fect adaptation of the metrical form to the thought. Nevertheless, in 
general, the object of the Greek epigram is to ennoble a subject by 
elevation of thought and beauty of language. The unexpected turn of 
the thought and the pointedness of expression, which the moderns con- 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 127 

sider as the essence of this species of composition, were not required in 
the ancient Greek epigram ; in which nothing more is requisite than that 
the entire thought should be conveyed within the limits of a few dis- 
tichs: and thus in the hands of the early poets the epigram was 
remarkable for the conciseness and expressiveness of its language ; 
differing in this respect from the elegy, in which a full vent was given 
to the feelings of the poet. I — — -""""' 

Epigrams were probably composed in an elegiac form, shortly after 
the time when the elegy first arose ; and the Anthology contains some 
under the celebrated names of Archilochus, Sappho, and Anacreon. 
No peculiar character, however, is to be observed in the genuine epi- 
grams of this early period. It was Simonides, with whom we have 
closed the series of elegiac poets, who first gave to the epigram the 
perfection of which, consistently with its purpose, it was capable. In 
this respect Simonides was favoured by the circumstances of his time ; 
for on account of the high consideration which he enjoyed both in 
Athens and Peloponnesus, he was frequently employed by the states 
which fought against the Persians to adorn with inscriptions the tombs 
of their fallen warriors. The best and most celebrated of these epi- 
taphs is the inimitable inscription on the Spartans who died at Ther- 
mopylae, which actually existed on the spot : " Foreigner, tell the 
Lacedaemonians that we are lying here in obedience to their laws*." 
Never was heroic courage expressed with such calm and unadorned 
grandeur. In all these epigrams of Simonides the characteristic peculia- 
rity of the battle in which the warriors fell is seized. Thus in the 
epigram on the Athenians who died at Marathon — " Fighting in the 
van of the Greeks, the Athenians at Marathon destroyed the power of 
the glittering Mediansf." There are besides not a few epigrams of 
Simonides which were intended for the tombstones of individuals : 
among these we will only mention one which diners from the others in 
being a sarcasm in the form of an epitaph. It is that on the Rhodian 
lyric poet and athlete Timocreon, an opponent of Simonides in Iris art : 
" Having eaten much, and drunk much, and said much evil of other 
men, here I lie, Timocreon the Rhodian J." With the epitaphs are 
naturally connected the inscriptions on sacred offerings, especially where 
both refer to the Persian war ; the former being the discharge of a debt 
to the dead, the latter a thanksgiving of the survivors to the gods. 
Among these one of the best refers to the battle of Marathon, which, 
from the neatness and elegance of the expression, loses its chief beauty 
in a prose translation §. It was inscribed on the statue of Pan, which 

* Simonides, fr. 27. ed. Gaisford. 

-r In Lycurgus and Aristides. \ Fr. 58. 

§ The words are these (fr. lb — 

Tov r^ayoTovv l/u,\ n«v#, <rov ' ' Aqkuc 



J2S HISTORY OF THE 

the Athenians had set up in a grotto under their acropolis, because the 
ulian god had, according to the popular belief, assisted them at 
Marathon. " Miltiades set up me, the cloven-footed Pan, the Arca- 
dian, who took part against the Medians, and with the Athenians." 
But Simonides sometimes condescended to express sentiments which he 
could not have shared, as in the inscription on the tripod consecrated at 
Delphi, which the Greeks afterwards caused to be erased : " Pausanias, 
the commander of the Greeks, having destroyed the army of the Medes, 
dedicated this monument to Phoebus*." These verses express the arro- 
gance of the Spartan general, which the good sense and moderation of 
the poet would never have approved. The form of nearly all these epi- 
grams of Simonides is the elegiac. Simonides usually adhered to it 
except when a name (on account of a short between two long syllables) 
could not be adapted to the dactylic metref ; in which cases he employed 
trochaic measures. The character of the language, and especially the 
dialect, also remained on the whole true to the elegiac type, except that 
in inscriptions for monuments designed for Doric tribes, traces of the 
Doric dialect sometimes occur. 



CHAPTER XT. 



§ 1. Striking contrast of the Iambic and other contemporaneous Poetry. — § 2. 
Poetry in reference to the bad and the vulgar. — § 3. Different treatment of it in 
Homer and Hesiod. — 6 4. Homeric Comic Poems, Margites, &c. — § 5. Scurri- 
lous songs at meals, at the worship of Demeter ; the Festival of Demeter of Paros 
the cradle of the Iambic poetry of Archilochus. — § 6. Date and Public Life of 
Archilochus. — § 7. His Private Life ; subject of his Iambics. — § 8. Metrical form 
of his iambic and trochaic verses, and different application of the two asynaitetes ; 
epodes.' — § 9. Inventions and innovations in the musical recitation. — § 10. In- 
novations in Language. — § 11. Simonides of Amorgus; his Satirical Poem against 
Women. — § 12. Solon's iambics and trochaics. — § 13. Iambic Poems of Hippo- 
nax ; invention of choliambics ; Ananias. — § 14. The Fable ; its application 
among the Greeks, especially in Iambic poetry. — § 15. Kinds of the Fable, named 
after different races and cities. — § 16. iEsop, his Life, and the Character of his 
Fables. — § 17. Parody, burlesques in an epic form, by Hipponax. — § 18. Batra- 
chomyomachia. 

§ 1. The kind of poetry distinguished among the ancients by the name 
Iambic, was created by the Parian poet Archilochus, at the same time 
as the elegy. In entering on the consideration of this sort of poetry, 
and in endeavouring by the same process as we have heretofore em- 
ployed to trace its origin to the character of the Grecian people, and to 
estimate its poetical and moral value, we are met at the first glance by 
facts more difficult, and apparently more impossible of comprehension, 
than any we have hitherto encountered. At a time when the Greeks, 

* r * 40. f As 'Apxivxvrvg, 'Wvrovixoi. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 129 

accustomed only to the calm unimpassioned tone of the Epos, had but 
just found a temperate expression of livelier emotions in the elegy, 
this kind of poetry, which has nothing in common with the Epos, 
either in form or in matter, arose. It was a light tripping measure, 
sometimes loosely constructed or purposely halting and broken, and 
well adapted to vituperation, unrestrained by any regard to morality or 
decency*. 

The ancients drew a lively image of this bitter and unscrupulous 
spirit of slanderous attack in the well-known story of the daughters of 
Lycambes, who hanged themselves from shame and vexation. Yet 
this sarcastic Archilochus, this venomous libeller, was esteemed by 
antiquity not only an unrivalled master in his peculiar line, but, gene- 
rally, the first poet after Homerf. Where, we are compelled to ask, 
is the soaring flight of the soul which distinguishes the true poet ? 
Where that beauty of delineation which confers grace and dignity even 
on the most ordinary details ? 

§ 2. But Poetry has not only lent herself, in every age, to the descrip- 
tions of a beautiful and magnificent world, in which the natural powers 
revealed to us by our own experience are invested with a might and a 
perfection surpassing truth : she has also turned back her glance upon 
the reality by which she was surrounded, with all its wants and its 
weaknesses ; and the more she was filled with the beauty and the 
majestic grace of her own ideal world, the more deeply did she feel, 
the more vividly express, the evils and the deficiencies attendant on 
man's condition. The modes in which Poetry has accomplished this 
have been various; as various as the tempers and the characters of 
those whom she has inspired. 

A man of a serene and cheerful cast of mind, satisfied with the order 
of the universe, regarding the great and the beautiful in nature and 
in human things with love and admiration, though he distinctly per- 
ceives the defective and the bad, does not suffer his perception of 
them to disturb his enjoyment of the whole : he contemplates it as the 
shade in a picture, which serves but to bring out, not to obscure, the 
brilliancy of the principal parts. A light jest drops from the poet's 
tongue, a pitying smile plays on his lip ; but they do not darken or 
deform the lofty beauty of his creations. 

The thoughts, the occupations, of another are more intimately 
blended with the incidents and the conditions of social and civil life ; and 
as a more painful experience of all the errors and perversities of man 
is thus forced upon him, his voice, even in poetry, will assume a more 
angry and vehement tone. And yet even this voice of harsh rebuke 

* AvcriruvTis "etpfioif raging iambics, says the Emperor Hadrian. (Brunck, Anal. ii. 
p. 286.; 

"In celeres iambos misit furentem." Horace. 

f Maximus poeta aut certe summo proximus >as he is called in Valerius Maximus. 

K 



130 HISTORY OF THE 

may be poetical, when it is accompanied by a pure and noble conception 
oi' things as they ought to be. 

\ i more, the poet may himself suffer from the assaults of human 
Marions. He may himself be stained with the vices and the weak- 
nesses of human nature, and his voice may be poured forth from amidst 
the whirl and the conflict of the passions, and may be troubled, not only 
by disgust at the sight of interruptions to the moral order of the world, 
but by personal resentments and hatreds. The ancients in their 
day, and we in ours, have bestowed admiring sympathy on such a poet, 
if the expressions of his scorn and his hate did but betray an unusual 
vehemence of feeling- and vigour of thought ; and if, through all the 
passionate confusion of his spirit, gleams of a nature susceptible of 
noble sentiments were apparent ; for the impotent rage of a vulgar 
mind will never rise to the dignity of poetry, even though it be adorned 
with all the graces of language. 

§ 3. Here, as in many other places, it will be useful to recur 
to the two epic poets of antiquity, the authors of all the principles 
of Greek literature. Homer, spite of the solemnity and loftiness 
of epic poetry, is full of archness and humour; but it is of that 
cheerful and good-natured character which tends rather to increase 
than to disturb enjoyment. Thersites is treated with unqualified 
severity ; and we perceive the peculiar disgust of the monarchi- 
cally disposed poet at such inciters of the people, who slander every- 
thing distinguished and exalted, merely because they are below 
it. But it must be remarked that Thersites is a very subordinate 
figure in the group of heroes, and serves only as a foil to those 
who, like Ulysses, hold dominion over the people as guides and 
rulers. When, however, persons of a nobler sort are exhibited in 
a comic light, as, for instance, Agamemnon, blinded by Zeus and 
confident in his delusion and in his supposed wisdom *, it is done 
with such a delicacy of handling that the hero hardly loses any of his 
dignity in our eyes. In this way the comedy of Homer (if we may 
use the expression) dared even to touch the gods, and in the loftiest 
regions found subjects for humorous descriptions: for, as the gods 
presided over the moral order of the universe only as a body, and no 
individual god could exercise his special functions without regard to the 
prerogatives of others, Ares, Aphrodite, and Hermes might serve as 
types of the perfection of quarrelsome violence, of female weakness, and 
of finished cunning, without ceasing to have their due share of the 
honours paid to divinity. 

Of a totally different kind is the wit of Hesiod; especially as'it is 
employed in the Theogony against the daughters of Pandora, the female 
sex. This has its source in a strong feeling of disgust and indignation, 

* See ch. v. § 8. 



Literature op ancient Greece. 131 

which leads the poet, in the bitterness of his mood, to overstep the bounds 
of justice, and to deny all virtue to women. 

In the Works and Days, too, which afford him frequent opportunities 
for censure, Hesiod is not deficient in a kind of wit which exhibits the 
bad and the contemptible with striking- vigour ; but his wit is never 
that g'ay humour which characterises the Homeric poetry, of which 
it is the singular property to reconcile the frail and the faulty with the 
grand and the elevated, and to blend both in one harmonious idea. 

§ 4. Before, however, we come to the consideration of the third stage 
of the poetical representation of the bad and the despicable, the exist- 
ence of which we have hinted at in our mention of Archilochus, we must 
remark that even the early epic poetry contained not only scattered 
traits of pleasantry and satire, but also entire pictures in the same tone, 
which formed small epics. On this head we have great reason to 
lament the loss of the Margites, which Aristotle, in his Poetics, ascribes, 
according to the opinion current among the Greeks, to Homer himself, 
and regards as the ground-work of comedy, in like manner as he regards 
the Iliad and the Odyssey as the precursors of tragedy. He likewise 
places the Margites in the same class with poems written in the iambic 
metre; but he seems to mean that the iambus was not employed 
for this class of poetry till subsequently to this poem. Hence it 
is extremely probable that the iambic verses which, according to 
the ancient grammarians, were introduced irregularly into the Mar- 
gites, were interpolated in a later version, perhaps by Pigres the Hali- 
carnassian, the brother of Artemisia, who is also called the author 
of this poem*. 

From the few fragments and notices relative to the Homeric Margites 
which have come down to us, we can gather that it was a representa- 
tion of a stupid man, who had a high opinion of his own cleverness, for 
he was said "to know many works, but know all badly f;" and we 
discover from a story preserved by Eustathius that it was necessary to 
hold out to him very subtle reasons to induce him to do things which 
required but a very small portion of intellect J. 

There were several other facetious small epics which bore the name of 
Homer ; such as the poem of the Cercopes, those malicious, and yet merry 
elves whom Hercules takes prisoners after they have played him many 
mischievous tricks, and drags them about till they escape from him by 

* Thus the beginning of the Margites was as follows : — 
T HX^s <ri$ us KoXo<puva yigwv xki duos ccot}os> 
Movcrxuv 6ipu,<7rwv kou Ix'/ifibkou 'A<rdXhuvo$, 
$ikris 'ix uv * iv X l 9™ ^tS<P^yyov Xvgw. 
Concerning Pigres, see below, § 18. He also interpolated the Iliad with penta- 
meters. 

f riaAX' yi-ria-rccro 'igyu, xuxus S' ri'ricrrccro vrctvrcc. 
t Eustath. ad Od. x. 552, p. 1669, ed. Rom. 

k2 



132 HISTORY OF THE 

fresh stratagems ; the Datrachomyomachia, which we shall have occa- 
sion to mention hereafter as an example of parody; the Seven 
times shorn Goat (tut, eTrrdrreKTog), and the Song of the Fieldfares 
(irucixktfe'), which Homer is said to hare sung to the boys for field- 
fares. Some few such pleasantries have come down to us, particularly the 
poem of the Pot-kiln (>ap>'oc ?} kepapc), which applies the imagina- 
tion and mythological machinery of the epic style to the business of 
pottery. 

§ 5. These humorous poems are too innocuous and too free from 
personal attacks to have much resemblance to the caustic iambics of 
Archilochus. More akin to them undoubtedly were the satirical songs 
which, according to the Homeric hymn to Hermes, the young men sang 
extemporaneously in a sort of wanton mutual defiance*. At the public 
tables of Sparta, also, keen and pointed raillery was permitted, and con- 
versation seasoned with Spartan salt was not held to afford any reasonable 
ground of offence to those who took part in it. But an occasion for yet 
more audacious and unsparing jest was afforded to the Greeks by some 
of the most venerable and sacred of their religious rites — the per- 
mission, or rather encouragement to wanton and unrestrained jokes 
on everything affording matter for such ebullitions of mirth, con- 
nected with certain festivals of Demeter, and the deities allied to her. 
It was a law at these festivals that the persons engaged in their cele- 
bration should, on certain days, banter all who came in their way, and 
assail thein with keen and licentious raillery t- This was the case at the 
mystic festival of Demeter at Eleusis, among others. Hence, also, Ari- 
stophanes in the Frogs introduces a chorus of the initiated, who lead 
a blissful life in the infernal regions, and makes them pray to Demeter 
that she would grant them to sport and dance securely the livelong- 
day, and have much jocose and much serious talk ; and, if the festival 
had been worthily honoured by jest and merriment, that they might be 
crowned as victors. The chorus also, after inviting the jolly god 
Iacchus to take part in its dances, immediately proceeds to exercise 
its wit in satirical verses on various Athenian demagogues and cowards. 

* V. b5seq., \\ ccvrotr^ih'tn; .... 'tin xougoi 

fifiureti SaXi'Affi vxgcit(ZokK xtgreftzouffiv. 
T Concerning the legality of this religious license there is an important passage 
in Aristotle, Pol. vii. 15. We will set down the entire passage as we understand it : 
" As we banish from the state the speaking of indecent things, it is clear that we 
also prohibit indecent pictures and representations. The magistrate must therefore 
provide that no statue or picture of this kind exist, except for certain deities, of the 
class to Avhich the law allows scurrilous jesting (oh ko) rh <ru6ttffp.lv a.<x<dftvff» i 
Mftos). At temples of this kind the law also permits all persons of a mature age to 
pray to the gods for themselves, their children and wives. But younger persons 
ought to be prohibited from being present at the recitation of iambic verses, or at 
comedies, until they have reached the age at which they may sit at table and drink 
to intoxicatiou." 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 133 

This raillery was so ancient and inveterate a custom that it had given 
rise to a peculiar word, which originally denoted nothing but the jest, 
and banter used at the festivals of Demeter, namely, Iambus*. This 
was soon converted into a mythological person, the maid Iambe, who by 
some jest first drew a smile from Demeter bewailing her lost daughter, 
and induced her to take the barley drink of the cyceon ; a legend 
native to Eleusis, which the Homerid who composed the hymn to 
Demeter has worked up into an epic form. If we consider that, 
according to the testimony of the same hymn, the island of Paros, the 
birth-place of Archilochus, was regarded as, next to Eleusis, the peculiar 
seat of Demeter and Cora ; that the Parian colony Thasos, in the settle- 
ment of which Archilochus himself had a share, embraced the mystic 
rites of Demeter as the most important worshipt ; that Archilochus him- 
self obtained the prize of victory over many competitors for a hymn to 
Demeter, and that one whole division of his songs, called the Io-bacchi, 
were consecrated to the service of Demeter and the allied worship of 
Bacchus I ; we shall entertain no doubt that these festal customs af- 
forded Archilochus an occasion of producing his unbridled iambics, 
for which the manners of the Greeks furnished no other time or place ; 
and that with his wit and talent he created a new kind of poetry out 
of the raillery which had hitherto been uttered extempore. All the 
wanton extravagance which was elsewhere repressed and held in 
check by law and custom, here, under the protection of religion, burst 
forth with boundless license ; and these scurrilous effusions were at 
length reduced by Archilochus into the systematic form of iambic 
metre. 

§ 6. The time at which this took place was the same with that in 
which the elegy arose, or but little later. Archilochus was a son 
of Telesicles, who, in obedience to a Delphic oracle, led a colony from 
Paros to Thasos. The establishment of this colony is fixed by the 
ancients at the 15th or 18th Olympiad (720 or 708 B.C.) ; with which 
it perfectly agrees, that the date at which Archilochus flourished is, 
according to the chronologists of antiquity, the 23rd Olympiad 
(688 b. c.) ; though it is often placed lower. According to this calcula- 
tion, Archilochus began his poetical career in the latter years of the 



is vain to seek an etymology for the word iambus : the most probable suppo- 
Sjthat it originated in exclamations, oXoXvypo), expressive of joy. Similar in 



* It is 

sition is, 

form are fyiuplZos, the Bacchic festival procession ; 'h^vguy^e;, a Bacchic hymn, and 

"Svpfios, also a kind of Bacchic song. 

f The great painter Polygnotus, a native of Thasos, contemporary with Cimon, 
in the painting of the infernal regions, which he executed at Delphi, repre- 
sented in the boat of Charon the Parian priestess Cleoboea, who had brought this 
mystic worship to Thasos. 

J Ari{xnrpo$ ccyvn$ xa) Kogfis <r>;v rtav/iyu^iv tr'ifoMV, 

is a verse from these poems preserved by Hephsestion, fragm, 68, Gaisford. 



134 HISTORY OF THE 

Lvdian kino: Gyges, whose wealth he mentions in a verse still extant* ; 
but is mainly to be regarded as the contemporary of Ardys (from Olymp. 
2:>, 3 to 37,-1. b.c. 678 — 29). In another versef he mentions the cala- 
mities of Magnesia, which befel that city through the Treres, and, 
; ,s we have seen, not in the earliest part of Ardys' reignj. Archilochus 
draws a comparison between the misery of Magnesia and the melancholy 
condition of Thasos, whither he was led by his family, and was dis- 
appointed in his hopes of finding the mountains of gold they had 
expected. The Thasians seem, indeed, never to have been contented 
with their island, though its fertility and its mines might have yielded a 
considerable revenue, and to have tried to get possession of the opposite 
coast of Thrace, abounding in gold and in wine ; an attempt which 
involved them in wars not only with the natives of that country — for 
example the Saians § — but also with the early Greek colonists. We 
find in fragments of Archilochus that they had, even in his time, 
extended their incursions so far eastward as to come into conflict 
with the inhabitants of Maronea for the possession of Stryme ||, winch 
at a later period, during the Persian war, was regarded as a city of 
the Thasians. Dissatisfied with the posture of affairs, which the poet 
often represents as desperate, (in such expressions as, that the cala- 
mities of all Hellas were found combined in Thasos, that the stone of 
Tantalus was hanging over their heads, &c.,)^[ Archilochus must have 
quitted Thasos and returned to Paros, since we are informed by credible 
writers that he lost his life in a war between the Parians and the inha- 
bitants of the neighbouring island of Naxos. 

§ 7. From these facts it appears, that the public life of Archi- 
lochus was agitated and unsettled ; but his private life was still more 
exposed to the conflict of contending passions. He had courted a 
Parian girl, Neobule, the daughter of Lycambes, and his trochaic 
poems expressed the violent passion with which she had inspired 
him**. Lycambes had actually promised him his daughterft, and 
we are ignorant what induced him to withdraw his consent. The rage 
with which Archilochus assailed the family, now knew no bounds; 
and he not only accused Lycambes of perjury, but Neobule and her 
sisters of the most abandoned lives. It is unintelligible how the 
Parians could suffer the exasperated poet to heap such virulent 
abuse on persons with whom he had shortly before so earnestly desired 
to connect himself, had not these iambics first appeared at a fes- 
tival whose solemnization gave impunity to every license ; and had it 
not been regarded as a privilege of this kind of poetry to exag- 
gerate at will the evil reports for which any ground existed, and 

* Fragm. 10. -j- Fragm. 71. The reading e«wv in this fragment is conjectural. 
I Comp. ch. x. § 4. § Ch. x. $ 7. 

See Harpocrttion in i*^ qr Fragm . 21 43 . ■ ** Fr 25 26# 

tt Ita is evident from fr. 83, >*„ 3' 5wr J lWw ^ &Xa , Ti J r{ £^„. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 135 

in the delineation of offences which deserved some reproof to give 
the reins to the fancy. The ostensible object of Archilochus's iambics, 
like that of the later comedy, was to give reality to caricatures, every 
hideous feature of which was made more striking by being mag- 
nified. But that these pictures, like caricatures from the hand of a 
mastey, had a striking truth, maybe inferred from the impression which 
Archilochus's iambics produced, both upon contemporaries and posterity. 
Mere calumnies could never have driven the daughters of Lycambes 
to hang themselves, if, indeed, this story is to be believed, and is 
not a gross exaggeration. But we have no need of it; the uni 
versal admiration which was awarded to Archilochus's iambics, proves 
the existence of a foundation of truth ; for when had a satire which 
was not based on truth universal reputation for excellence? When 
Plato produced his first dialogues against the sophists, Gorgias is said 
to have exclaimed, " Athens has given birth to a new Archilochus." 
This comparison, made by a man not unacquainted with art, shows 
at all events that Archilochus must have possessed somewhat of the keen 
and delicate satire which in Plato is most severe where a dull listener 
would be least sensible of it. 

§ 8. Unluckily, however, we can form but an imperfect idea of the 
general character and tone of Archilochus's poetry; and we can 
only lament a loss such as has perhaps hardly been sustained in the 
works of any other Greek poet. Horace's epodes are, as he himself 
says, formed on the model of Archilochus, as to form and spirit*, but 
not as to subject ; and we can but rarely detect or divine a direct imi- 
tation of the Parian poetf. 

All that we can now hope to obtain is the knowledge of the external 
form, especially the metrical structure of Archilochus's poems ; and if 
we look to this alone, we must regard Archilochus as one of those 
creative minds which discover the aptest expression for new directions 
of human thought. While the metrical form of the epos was founded 
upon the dactyl, which, from the equality of the arsis and thesis, has a 
character of repose and steadiness, Archilochus constructed his metres 
out of that sort of rhythm which the ancient writers called the double 
(yevog SnrXacriov), because the arsis has twice the length of the thesis. 
Hence arose, according as the thesis is at the beginning or the end, the 
iambus or the trochee, which have the common character of lightness 

* Parios ego primus iambos 
Ostendi Latio, numeros animqgque secutus 
Archilochi, non res et agentia verba Lycamben. 

(Horat. Ep. i. 19, 23.) 
f The complaint about perjury (Epod. xv.) agrees well with the relations of 
Archilochus to the family of Lycambes. The proposal to go to the islands of the 
blessed, in order to escape all misery, in Epod. xvi., would be more natural in the 
mouth of* Archilochus. directed to the Thasian colony, than in that of Horace. The 
Neobule of Horace is Canidia, but with great alterations. 



13(i HISTORY OP THE 

and rapidity. At the same time there is this difference, that the iambus, 
proceeding from the short to the long syllable, acquires a tone 
itrength, and appears peculiarly adapted to impetuous diction and 
l)Dld invective, while the trochee, which falls from the long to the 
short, has a feebler character. Its light tripping movement appeared 
peculiarly suited to dancing songs ; and hence, besides the name of 
troclucus, {he runner, it also obtained the name of chore ius, the dancer* : 
occasionally, however, its march was languid and feeble. Archilochus 
formed long verses of both kinds of feet, and in so doing, with the pur- 
pose of giving more strength and body to these short and weak rhythms, 
he united iambic and trochaic feet in pairs. In every such pair of feet 
(called dipodia), he left the extreme thesis of the dipodia doubtful 
(that is, in the iambic dipodia the first, in the trochaic the last thesis) ; 
so that these short syllables might be replaced by long ones. Archi- 
lochus, however, in order not to deprive the metre of its proper rapidity, 
did not introduce these long syllables so often as iEschylus, for 
example, who sought, by means of them, to give more solemnity and 
dignity to his verses. Moreover, Archilochus did not admit resolutions 
of the long syllables, like the comic poets, who thus made the course of 
the metre more rapid and various. He then united three iambic 
dipodias (by making the same words common to more than one pair 
of feet) into a compact whole, the iambic trimeter : and four trochaic 
dipodias, two of which, however, were, divided from the other two 
by a fixed pause (called diccresis), into the trochaic tetrameter. 
Without going more minutely into the structure of the verses, it is suf- 
ficiently evident from what has been said, that these metres were in 
their way as elaborate productions of Greek taste and genius as the 
Parthenon or the statue of the Olympic Jupiter. Nor can there 
be any stronger proof of their perfection than that metres, said to 
have been invented by Archilochust, retained their currency through 
all ages of the Greek poetry; and that although their application was 
varied in many ways, no material improvement was made in their 
structure. 

The distinction observed by Archilochus in the use of them was, that 
he employed the iambic for the expression of his wrath and bitterness, 
(whence nearly all the iambic fragments of Archilochus have a hostile 
bearing,) and that he employed the trochaic as a medium between the 
iambic and the elegiac, of which latter style Archilochus was, as we 
have already seen, one of the earliest cultivators. As compared with 
the elegy, the trochaic metre has less rapidity and elevation of sentiment, 

* According to Aristot. Poet. 4, the trochaic tetrameter is suited to an fegmri 
«■«»*«, but the iambic verse is most Xuruiu 

f t JJS<£i«.T b t o IUSica ; C ' 28 ' the Chief P assa S e on the numerous inventions 
of Archilochus in rhythm and music. 



LITERATURE OV ANCIENT GREECE. 137 

and approaches more to the tone of common life ; as in the passage* in 
which the poet declares that "he is not fond of a tall general walking 
with his legs apart, with his hair carefully arranged, and his chin well 
shorn; but he prefers a short man, with his legs bent in, walking 
firmly on his feet, and full of spirit and resource." A personal descrip- 
tion of this kind, with a serious intent, but verging on the comic in its 
tone, would not have suited the elegy; and although reflections on 
the misfortunes of life occur in trochaic as well as in elegiac verses, yet 
an attentive reader can distinguish between the languid tone of the 
latter and the lively tone of the former, which would naturally be accom- 
panied in the delivery with appropriate gesticulation. Trochaics were 
also recited by Archilochus at the banquet ; but while the elegy was an 
outpouring of feelings in which the guests were called on to parti- 
cipate, Archilochus selects the trochaic tetrameter in order to re- 
prove a friend for having shamelessly obtruded himself upon a feast 
prepared at the common expense of the guests, without contributing his 
share, and without having been invited f. 

Other forms of the poetry of Archilochus may be pointed out, with a 
view of showing the connexion between their metrical and poetical 
characters. Among these are the verses called by the metrical writers 
asynartetes, or unconnected, and by them said to have been invented by 
Archilochus : they are considered by Plutarch as forming the transi- 
tion to another class of rhythms. Of these difficult metres we will only 
say, that they consist of two metrical clauses or members of different 
kinds ; for example, dactylic or anapaestic, and trochaic, which are 
loosely joined into one verse, the last syllable of the first member 
retaining the license of the final syllable of a verse J. This kind of 
metre, which passed from the ancient iambic to the comic poets, has a 
feeble and languid expression, though capable at times of a careless 
grace ; nor was it ever employed for any grave or dignified subject. This 
character especially appears in the member consisting of three pure 
trochees, with which the asynartetes often close; which was named Ithy- 
phallicus, because the verses sung at the Phallagogia of Dionysus, the 
scene of the wildest revelry in the worship of this god, were chiefly com- 
posed in this metre §. It seems as if the intention had been that after 

* Fragm. 9. 

f Fragm. 88. The person reproved is the same Pericles who, in the elegies, is 
addressed as an intimate friend. (See fragm. 1, and 131.) 

X Archilochus, as well as his imitator Horace, did not allow these two clauses to 
run into one another; hut as the comic poets used this liberty (Hephaestion, p. 84. 
Gaisf.) it is certain that in Archilochus, 'E^cc<r^ovi}tj Xo^/Aae, | xfipd ret yikoTov, for 
example, is to be considered as one verse. 

§ A remarkable example of this class of songs is the poem in which the 
Athenians saluted Demetrius, the son of Antigonus, as a new Bacchus, and which 
is called by Athenseus l&u<pa.\\os. It begins as follows (vi. p. 253 ) : — 
CI; oi ftsytffToi ruv hut xct) tptXraroi 
ry toXzi vruQiitrtv. 

This poem, by its relaxed and creeping but at the same time elegant and graceful 
tone, characterizes the Athens of that time far better than many declamations of 
rhetorical historians. 



|38 HISTORY OF THE 

the effort required in theanapnestic or dactylic member, the voice should 
find repose in the trochaic clause, and that the verse should thus proceed 
frith igreeabk slowness. Hence the soft plaintive tone, which may 
MftiN be recognised ill the fragments of the asynartetes of Archilochus, 
1 as in the corresponding imitations of Horace*. 

Another metrical invention of Archilochus was a prelude to the 
formation of strophes, such as we find them in the remains of theiEolic 
lyric poets. This was the epodes, which, however, are here to be consi- 
dered not as separate strophes, but only as verses ; that is, as shorter 
verses subjoined to longer ones. Thus an iambic dimeter forms an 
epode to a trimeter, an iambic dimeter or trimeter to a dactylic hexa- 
meter, a short dactylic verse to an iambic trimeter, an iambic verse to 
an asynartete ; the object often being to give force and energy to the 
languid fall of the rhythm. In general, however, the purposes of these 
epodic combinations are as numerous as their kinds; and if it appears 
at first sight that Archilochus was guided by no principle in the forma- 
tion of them, yet on close examination it will be found that each has 
its appropriate excellence t- 

§ 9. As to the manner in which these metres were recited, so im- 
portant a constituent in their effect, we know thus much, — that the 
uniformity of the rhapsodists' method of recitation was broken, and that 
a freer and bolder style was introduced, which sometimes passed into 
the grotesque and whimsical ; although, in general, iambic verses (as we 
have already seen |) were in strictness not sung but rhapsodised. There, 
was, however, a mode of reciting iambics introduced by Archilochus, by 
which some poems were repeated to the time of a musical instru- 
ment, and others were sung§. The paracataloge, which consisted 
In the interpolation of a passage recited without strict rhythm and 
fixed melody, into a piece composed according to certain rules, 
was also ascribed to Archilochus. Lastly, many entertained the opi- 
nion (which, however, seems doubtful,) that Archilochus introduced 
the separation of instrumental music from singing, to this extent, — that 

* See especially fragm. 24, where Archilochus describes, in asynartetes with 
iambic epodes, the violent love which has consumed his heart, darkened his sight, 
and deprived him of reason; probably in reference to his former love for Neobule, 
which he had then given up. Horace's eleventh epode is similar in many respects. 

f When one epode follows two verses there is a small strophe, as fragm. 33 : — 

Aivos tic avS^uTuy ooi } 
u; S.p uXwrnZ kohto; 

If the two last verses are here united into one, a probde is formed, which is the 
reverse of the epode; it often occurs in Horace. Another example of a kind of 
strophe is the short strain of victory which Archilochus is said to have composed 
for the Olympic festival to Hercules and Iolaus (fragm. CO) ; two trimeters with 
the ephymnion TmtXXa zaXXlnxu 

% Chap. iv. § 3. 

§t«^£v tm/tfiua kiyi<r(cti ■xu.pu. rh zoovinv, ra §' «W«/, Plutarch ubi sup. Probably 
this was connected with the epodic composition ; though, according to Plutarch, it 
also occurred in the tragedians, 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 139 

the instrument left the voice, and did not fall in with it till the end ; 
while the early musicians accompanied it, syllable for syllable, with 
the same notes on the instrument*. A peculiar kind of three-cornered 
stringed instrument, called iambyce, was also used to accompany iambics, 
and probably dated from the time of Archilochusf . 

§ 10. It was necessary to lay these dry details before the reader in 
order to give an idea of the inventive genius which places Archilochus 
next, in point of originality, to Homer, among the Greek poets. There 
is, however, another remarkable part of the poetical character of Archi- 
lochus, viz., his language. If we can imagine ourselves living at a 
time when only the epic style, with its unchanging solemnity, its abun- 
dance of graphic epithets, and its diffuse and vivid descriptions, was 
cultivated by poets, with no other exception than the recent and slight 
deviation of the elegy, we shall perceive the boldness of introducing 
into poetry a language which, surrendering all these advantages, attempt- 
ed to express ideas as they were conceived by a sober and clear under- 
standing. In this diction there are no ornamental epithets, intended only 
to fill out the image ; but every adjective denotes the quality appropriate 
to the subject, as conceived in the given placej. There are no anti- 
quated words or forms deriving dignity from their antiquity, but it is 
the plain language of common life; and if it seem to contain still many 
rare and difficult words, it is because the Ionic dialect retained words 
which afterwards fell into disuse. We likewise find in it the article§, 
unknown to the epic language ; and many particles used in a manner 
having a far closer affinity with a prose than with an epic style. In 
short, the whole diction is often such as might occur in an Attic comic 
poet, and, without the metre, even in a prose writer : nothing but the 
liveliness and energy with which all ideas are conceived and expressed, 
and the pleasing and graceful arrangement of the thoughts, distinguishes 
this language from that of common life ||. 

* In Plutarch the latter is called s^o^a^a xgovuv, the former h vro rhv utnv 
xpovo-is, which Archilochus is said to have invented. The meaning is made clear by 
a comparison of Aristot. Problem, xix. 39, and Plato Leg. vii. p. 812. Kgovav 
denotes the playing on any musical instrument, the flute as well as the cithara. 

f See Athen. xiv. p. 646. Hesychius and Photius in \u.[jt.$vx.Yi. The instrument 
KXi-^'xp-poh mentioned by Athenaeus, appears to have been specially destined for the 
V7T0 <rhv cio^hv xgodo-i;. 

X Of this kind are such adjectives as (fragm. 27) 

Oux '(&' opus §a,XXus uvrocXov fcgoci, xd^irui ya.(> nhvi, 

where the skin is not called tender generally, but in reference to the former bloom of 
the person addressed ; and as (fragm. 55) 

aftub^cLV %ot(3ciV \'tu.\tuoifjt.zio;, 

where the rock is not called dark generally, but in reference to the difficulty of 
avoiding a rock beneath the surface of the water. Such epic epithets as <xa.7V " Apiu 
(jctntyovov (fragm. 116) are very rare. 

§ E. g. fragm. 58 : rctuvli §' Z ribikt), rr.v vrvyh 'ix'->s> where the article separates 
Totuv^s. from -xvy/iv : " such are the posteriors which you have." 

jj We may cite, as instances of the simple language of Archilochus, two fragments 
evidently belonging to a poem which had some resemblance to Horace's 6th epode. 
In the beginning was fragment 122, ttoKK' oil' ika-prfe, «,\\ y ferny h ft'iyx; "the 



1 10 HISTORY OF THE 

\m Wt have laboured to place the great merit of Archilochus in its 
true light, we may give a shorter account of the works of his followers 
in iambic poetry. His writings will also furnish a standard of com- 
parison for the others. 

§ 11. Simonides of Amorgus follows Archilochus so closely that they 
may be considered as contemporaries. He is said to have flou- 
rished in the period following Ol. 29 (664 b. c). The principal events 
of his life, as of that of Archilochus, are connected with the foundation 
of a colony: he is said to have led the Samians to the neighbour- 
ing island of Amorgus, and to have there founded three cities. One 
ol' these was Minoa, where he settled. Like Archilochus, Simonides 
composed iambics and trochaic tetrameters ; and in the former metre 
he also attacked individuals with the lash of his invective and ridicule. 
What the family of Lycambes were to Archilochus, a certain Orodcecides 
was to Simonides. More remarkable, however, is the peculiar appli- 
cation which Simonides made of the iambic metre : that is to say, he 
took not individuals, but whole classes of persons, as the object of his 
satire. The iambics of Simonides thus acquire a certain resemblance to 
the satire interwoven into Hesiod's epic poems ; and the more so, as it 
is on women that he vents his displeasure in the largest of his extant 
pieces. For this purpose he makes use of a contrivance which, at a 
later time, also occurs in the gnomes of Phocylides ; that is, he derives 
the various, though generally bad, qualities of women from the variety 
of their origin ; by which fiction he gives a much livelier image of 
female characters than he could have done by a mere enumeration 
of their qualities. The uncleanly woman is formed from the swine, 
the cunning woman, equally versed in good and evil, from the fox, 
the talkative woman from the dog, the lazy woman from the earth, the 
unequal and changeable from the sea, the woman who takes pleasure 
only in eating and sensual delights from the ass, the perverse woman 
from the weasel, the woman fond of dress from the horse, the ugly 
and malicious woman from the ape. There is only one race created for 
the benefit of men, the woman sprung from the bee, who is fond of her 
work and keeps faithful watch over her house. 

§ 12. From the coarse and somewhat rude manner of Simonides, we 
turn with satisfaction to the contemplation of Solon's iambic style. Even 
in his hands the iambic retains a character of passion and warmth, but 
it is only used for self-defence in a just cause. After Solon had 
introduced his new constitution, he soon found that although he had 
attempted to satisfy the claims of all parties, or rather to give to each 

fox uses many ads, hut the hedgehog has one great one." viz. to roll himself up and 
resist his enemy. And towards the end (fragm. 118) h V Mrretpeu ftiya, Tiv 
***** 77 \uiva itivoTe Kvru'pujiterfat hkkoT;, hy which words the poet applied to him- 
■ell I he image of the hedgehog: he had the art of retaliating on those who ill- 
'1 him. Consequently the first fragment would be an incomplete trochaic 
tetrameter. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 141 

party and order its due share of power, he had not succeeded in 
satisfying* any. In order to shame his opponents, he wrote some 
iambics, in which he calls on his censors to consider of how many citizens 
the state would have been bereaved, if he had listened to the demands of 
the contending factions. As a witness of the goodness of his plans, Solon 
calls the great goddess Earth, the mother of Cronus, whose surface had 
before his time been covered with numerous boundary stones, in sign of 
the ground being mortgaged : these he had succeeded in removing, and 
in restoring the land in full property to the mortgagers. This frag- 
ment is well worth reading*, since it gives as clear an idea of the poli- 
tical situation of Athens at that time, as it does of Solon's iambic style. 
It shows a truly Attic energy and address in defending a favourite 
cause, while it contains the first germs of that power of speecht, 
which afterwards came to maturity in the dialogue of the Athenian 
stage, and in the oratory of the popular assembly and of the courts of 
justice. In the dialect and expressions, the poetry of Solon retains 
more of the Ionic cast. 

In like manner the few remnants of Solon's trochaics enable us to 
form some judgment of his mode of handling this metre. Solon wrote 
his trochaics at nearly the same time as his iambics ; when, notwith- 
standing his legislation, the struggle of parties again broke out between 
their ambitious leaders, and some thoughtless citizens reproached 
Solon, because he, the true patriot, the friend of the whole community, 
had not seized the reins with a firm hand, and made himself monarch : 
" Solon was not a man of deep sense or prudent counsel ; for when 
the god offered him blessings, he refused to take them : but when he 
had caught the prey, he was struck with awe, and drew not up the great 
net, failing at once in courage and sense: for else he would have been 
willing, having gained dominion and obtained unstinted wealth, and 
having been tyrant of Athens only for a single day, afterwards to be flayed, 
and his skin made a leathern bottle, and that his race should become 
extinct J. s ' The other fragments of Solon's trochaics agree with the 
same subject ; so that Solon probably only composed one poem in this 
metre. 

§ 13. Far more nearly akin to the primitive spirit of the iambic 
verse was the style of Hipponax, who flourished about the 60th 
Olympiad (540 b. c). He was born at Ephesus, and was compelled by 
the tyrants Athenagoras and Comas to quit his home, and to establish 
himself in another Ionian city, Clazomenae. This political persecution 
(which affords a presumption of his vehement love of liberty) probably 
laid the foundation for some of the bitterness and disgust with which 
he regarded mankind. Precisely the same fierce and indignant scorn 

* Solon, No. 28, Gaisford. fhivirns. \ Fragment 25, Gaisford. 



1 \2 HISTORY OF THfc 

which (band m utterance in the iambics of Archilochus, is ascribed to 
Hipponax What the family of Lycambes was to Archilochus, Bupalus 
endAthenifl (two sculptors of a family of Chios, which had produced 
several generations of artists) were to Hipponax. They had made his 
small, meagre, and ugly person the subject of a caricature; an insult 
Hipponax avenged in the bitterest and most pungent iambics, of which 
some remains are extant. In this instance, also, the satirist is said to 
have caused his enemy to hang himself. The satire of Hipponax, 
however, was not concentrated so entirely on certain individuals ; from 
existing fragments it appears rather to have been founded on a general 
view of life, taken, however, on its ridiculous and grotesque side. The 
luxury of the Greeks of Lesser Asia, which had already risen to a high 
pitch, is a favourite object of his sarcasms. In one of the longest frag- 
ments he says*, " For one of you had very quietly swallowed a continued 
stream of thunny with dainty sauces, like a Lampsacenian eunuch, and 
had devoured the inheritance of his father ; therefore he must now 
break rocks with a mattock, and gnaw a few figs and a little black 
barley bread, the food of slaves." 

His language is filled with words taken from common life, such as 
the names of articles of food and clothing, and of ordinary utensils, 
current among the working people. He evidently strives to make his 
iambics local pictures full of freshness, nature, and homely truth. For 
this purpose, the change which Hipponax devised in the iambic 
metre was as felicitous as it was bold ; he crippled the rapid agile 
gait of the iambic by transforming the last foot from a pure iambus 
into a spondee, contrary to the fundamental principle of the whole 
mode of versification. The metre thus maimed and stripped of its 
beauty and regularity"!", was a perfectly appropriate rhythmical form 
for the delineation of such pictures of intellectual deformity as Hip- 
ponax delighted in. Iambics of this kind (called choliambics or 
trimeter scazons) are still more cumbrous and halting when the fifth 
foot is also a spondee ; which, indeed, according to the original struc- 
ture, is not forbidden. These were called broken-backed iambics (ischior- 
rhogics), and a grammarian J settles the dispute (which, according to 
ancient testimony, was so hard to decide), how far the invention of this 
kind of verse ought to be ascribed to Hipponax, and how far to another 
iambographer, Ananius, by pronouncing that Ananius invented the 
ischiorrhogic variety, Hipponax the common scazon. It appears, how- 
ever, from the fragments attributed to him, that Hipponax sometimes 
used the spondee in the fifth foot. In the same manner and with the 
same ellect these poets also changed the trochaic tetrameter by regu- 

• Ap. Athen. vxi. p. 304. IS. f 7 l appvfyov. 

£ In Tyrwhitt, Dissert.de Babrio, p. 17. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 143 

larly lengthening the penultimate short syllable. Some remains of this 
kind are extant. Hipponax likewise composed pure trimeters in the 
style of Archilochus ; but there is no conclusive evidence that he mixed 
them with scazons. 

Ananius has hardly any individual character in literary history dis- 
tinct from that of Hipponax. In Alexandria their poems seem to have 
been regarded as forming one collection ; and thus the criterion by 
which to determine whether a particular passage belonged to the 
one or to the other, was often lost or never existed. Hence in the 
uncertainty which is the true author, the same verse is occasionally 
ascribed to both *. The few fragments which are attributed with cer- 
tainty to Ananius are so completely in the tone of Hipponax, that it 
would be a vain labour to attempt to point out any characteristic dif- 
ference t. 

§ 14. Akin to the iambic are two sorts of poetry, which, though 
differing widely from each other, have both their source in the turn for 
the delineation of the ludicrous, and both stand in a close historical 
relation to the iambic : — the Fable (originally called alvog y and after- 
wards, less precisely, fivSog and Xo'yoe), and the Parody. 

With regard to the fable, it is not improbable that in other countries, 
particularly in the north of Europe, it may have arisen from a child- 
like playful view of the character and habits of animals, which 
frequently suggest a comparison with the nature and incidents of human 
life. In Greece, however, it originated in an intentional travestie of 
human affairs. The alvog is, as its name denotes, an admonition^, 
or rather a reproof, veiled, either from fear of an excess of frankness 
or from love of fun and jest, beneath the fiction of an occurrence 
happening among beasts. Such is the character of the ainos, at 
its very first appearance in Hesiod §. " Now I will tell the kings 
a fable, which they will understand of themselves. Thus spake the 
hawk to the nightingale, whom he was carrying in his talons alojjfc 
in the air, while she, torn by his sharp claws, bitterly lamented — 
Foolish creature, why dost thou cry out? One much stronger than 
thou has seized thee ; thou must go whithersoever I carry thee, though 
thou art a songstress ; I can tear thee in pieces or I can let thee go at 
my pleasure." 

Archilochus employed the ainos in a similar manner in his iambics 
against Lycambes ||. He tells how the fox and the eagle had con- 
tracted an alliance, but (as the fable, according to other sources, goes 
* As in Athen. xiv. p. 625 C. 

•j- There is no sufficient ground for supposing that Herondas, who is sometimes 
mentioned as a choliarnbic poet, lived in this age. The mimiambic poetry ascribed 
to him will be treated of in connexion with the Mimes of Sophron. 

% 9ruguivuris. See Philological Museum, vol. i. p. 281. 
§ Op. et D. y. 202, seg. [| Fr. 38, ed. Gaisford ; see note on fr. 39. 



1 It HISTORY OF THE 

M to toll) * the eagle was so regardless of her engagement, that she 
lie tlu* fbx'i cubs. The fox could only call down the vengeance of the 
gods, and this shortly overtook her; for the eagle stole the flesh from 
an altar, and did not observe that she bore with it sparks which set 
fin to her nest, and consumed both that and her young ones. 

It is clear that Archilochus meant to intimate to Lycambes, that 
though lie was too powerless to call him to account for the breach of his 
engagement, he could bring down upon him the chastisement of the 

gods. 

Another of Archilochus's fables was pointed at absurd pride of rankf. 

In like manner Stesichorus cautioned his countrymen, the Hime- 
ncans, against Phalaris, by the fable of the horse, who, to revenge him- 
self on the stag, took the man on his back, and thus became his slave J. 
And wherever we have any ancient and authentic account of the origin 
of the jEsopian fable, we find it to be the same. It is always some 
action, some project, and commonly some absurd one, of the Samians, 
or Delphians, or Athenians, whose nature and consequences JEsop 
describes in a fable, and thus often exhibits the posture of affairs in a 
more lucid, just, and striking manner than could have been done by 
elaborate argument. But from the very circumstance, that in the Greek 
fable the actions and business of men are the real and prominent object, 
while beasts are merely introduced as a veil or disguise, it has nothing 
in common with popular legendary stories of beasts, nor has it any con- 
nexion with mythological stories of the metamorphoses of animals. It 
is exclusively the invention of those who detected in the social habits of 
the lower animals points of resemblance with those of man ; and while 
they retained the real character in some respects, found means, by the 
introduction of reason and speech, to place them in the light required 
for their purpose. 

§ 15. It is probable that the taste for fables of beasts and nume- 
rous similar inventions, found their way into Greece from the East; 
since this sort of symbolical and veiled narrative is more in harmony with 
the Oriental than with the Greek character. Thus, for example, the Old 
Testament contains a fable completely in the style of iEsop (Judges, 
ix. 8). But not to deviate into regions foreign to our purpose, we may 
confine ourselves to the avowal of the Greeks themselves, contained in 
the very names given by them to the fable. One kind of fable was 
called the Libyan, which we may, therefore, infer was of African origin, 
and was introduced into Greece through Cyrene. To this class belongs, 

* Coracs, MX* Altruviiuv crv vecyuyh, c. i. Aristoph. Av. 651, ascribes the fable to 

f See Gaisford, fr. 39. 
\ Arist. Rhet. ii. 20. The fable of Menenius Agrippa is similarly applied ; but 
it u difficult to believe that the uinos, so applied, was known in Latium at that time, 
ami it seems probable tbat the story was transferred from Greece to Rome. 






LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 1 45 

according- to jEschylus *, the beautiful fable of the wounded eagle, who, 
looking at the feathering of the arrow with which he was pierced, 
exclaimed, " I perish by feathers drawn from my own wing." From 
this example we see that the Libyan fable belonged to the class of fables 
of animals. So also did the sorts to which later teachers of rhetoric t give 
the names of the Cyprian and the CUician ; these writers also men- 
tion the names of some fabulists among the barbarians, as Cybissus the 
Libyan and Connis the Cilician. The contest between the olive and 
the laurel on mount Tmolus, is cited as a fable of the ancient 
Lydians \. 

The Carian stories or fables, however, were taken from human life, 
as, for instance, that quoted by the Greek lyric poets, Timocreon and 
Simonides. A Carian fisherman, in the winter, sees a sea polypus, and 
he says to himself, " If I dive to catch it, I shall be frozen to death ; if 
I don't catch it, my children must starve §." The Sybaritic fables men- 
tioned by Aristophanes have a similar character. Some pointed 
saying of a man or woman of Sybaris, with the particular circumstances 
which called it forth, is related ||. The large population of the wealthy 
Ionian Sybaris appears to have been much given to such repartees, 
and to have caught them up and preserved them with great eager- 
ness. Doubtless, therefore, the Sicilian poet Epicharmus means, by 
Sybaritic apophthegms^", what others call Sybaritic fables. The 
Sybaritic fables, nevertheless, occasionally invested not only the lower 
animals, but even inanimate objects, with life and speech, as in the 
one quoted by Aristophanes. A woman in Sybaris broke an earthen 
pot ; the pot screamed out, and called witnesses to see how ill she had 
been treated. Then the woman said, " By Cora, if you were to leave 
off calling out for witnesses, and were to make haste and buy a copper 
ring to bind yourself together, you would show more wisdom." This 
fable is used by a saucy merry old man, in ridicule of one whom he has 
ill treated, and who threatens to lay a complaint against him. Both 
the Sybaritic and iEsopian fables are represented by Aristophanes as 
jests, or ludicrous stories (yeXola). 

§ 16. To return to./Esop: Bentley has shown that he was very far from 
being regarded by the Greeks as one of their poets, and still less as 
a writer. They considered him merely as an ingenious fabulist, under 
whose name a number of fables, often applicable to human affairs, 
were current, and to whom, at a later period, nearly all that were either 

* Fragment of the Myrmidons. 
fTheon, and in part also Aphthonius. A fragment of a Cyprian fable, about the 
doves of Aphrodite, is published in the excerpts from the Codex Angelicus in Walz 
Rhetor. Grec. vol. ii. p. 12. 

J Callim. fr. 93. B.ntl. 
§ From the Codex Angelicus in Walz Rhet. Gr. vol. ii. p. 11., and the Proverbs of 
Macarius in Walz Arsenii Violetum, p. 318. 

|| Aristoph. Vesp. 1259, 1427, 1 137. «[ Suidas in v. 

L 



1 t(i HISTORY OP THE 

invented or derived from any other source, were attributed. His 
bieton km been dreaeed out by the later Greeks, with all manner of 
droll end whimsical incidents. What can be collected from the ancient 
writers down to Aristotle is, however, confined to the following. 

£eop ires a slave of the Samian Iadmon, the son of Hephaestopolis, 
who lived in the time of the Egyptian king Amasis. (The reign of 
Amasis begins Olymp. 52, 3, 570 b. c.) According to the state- 
ment of Eugeon, an old Samian historian, * he was a native of the 
Thracian city Mesembria, which existed long before it was peopled by 
a colony of Byzantines in the reign of Darius f. According to a less 
authentic account he was from Cotyaeon in Phrygia. It seems that his 
wit and pleasantry procured him his freedom; for though he remained 
in Iadmon's family, it must have been as a freedman, or he could not, as 
Aristotle relates, have appeared publicly as the defender of a dema- 
gogue, on which occasion he told a fable in support of his client It is 
generally received as certain that iEsop perished in Delphi ; the Del- 
phians, exasperated by his sarcastic fables, having put him to death on a 
charge of robbing the temple. Aristophanes alludes to a fable which 
iEsop told to the Delphians, of the beetle who found means to revenge 
himself on the eagle J. 

The character of the iEsopian fable is precisely that of the genuine 
beast-fable, such as we find it among the Greeks. The condition and 
habits of the lower animals are turned to account in the same manner, 
and, by means of the poetical introduction of reason and speech, are 
placed in such a light as to produce a striking resemblance to the inci- 
dents and relations of human life. 

Attempts were probably early made to give a poetical form to the 
iEsopian fable. Socrates is said to have beguiled his imprisonment 
thus. The iambic would of course suggest itself as the most appro- 
priate form (as at a later period it did to Phaedrus), or the scazon, which 
was adopted by Callimachus and Babrius§. But no metrical versions 
of these fables are known to have existed in early times. The aenus was 
generally regarded as a mode of other sorts of poetry, particularly 
the iambic, and not as a distinct class. 

§ 17. The other kind of poetry whose origin we are now about 
to trace, is the Parody. This was understood by the ancients, as 
well as by ourselves, to mean an adoption of the form of some cele- 
brated poem, with such changes in the matter as to produce a totally 
different effect; and, generally, to substitute mean and ridiculous for 
elevated and poetical sentiments. The contrast between the grand and 

* Elyiuv, or Euyiiuv, falsely written Euyttruv, in Suidas in v. A'lcrwxos. 
f Mesembria, Pattymbria, and Selymbria, are Thracian names, and mean the 
cities of Mesus, Pattys, and Selys. 

X Aristoph. Vesp. 1448. cf. Pac. 129. Coraes, iEsop. c. 2. 
§ A distich of an /Esopian fable is, however, attributed by Diogenes Laertius to 
Socrates. Fragments of fables in hexameters also occur. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 147 

sublime images suggested to the memory, and the comic ones introduced 
in their stead, renders parody peculiarly fitted to place any subject in a 
ludicrous, grotesque, and trivial light. The purpose of it, however, was 
not in general to detract from the reverence due to the ancient poet 
(who, in most cases was Homer), by this travestie, but only to add fresh 
zest and pungency to satire. Perhaps, too, some persons sporting with 
the austere and stately forms of the epos, (like playful children dressing 
themselves in gorgeous and flowing robes of state,) might have fallen 
upon the device of parody. 

We have already alluded to a fragment of Asius* in elegiac measure, 
which is not indeed a genuine parody, but which approaches to it. It 
is a comic description of a beggarly parasite, rendered more ludicrous by 
a tone of epic solemnity. But, according to the learned Polemon f, the 
real author of parody was the iambographer Hipponax, of whose pro- 
ductions in this kind a hexametrical fragment is still extant. 

§ 18. The Batrachomyomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and the Mice 
(which has come down to us among the lesser Homeric poems), is 
totally devoid of sarcastic tendency. All attempts to discover a satirical 
meaning in this little comic epos have been abortive. It is nothing 
more than the story of a war between the frogs and the mice, which, 
from the high-sounding names of the combatants, the detailed genealo- 
gies of the principal persons, the declamatory speeches, the interference 
of the gods of Olympus, and all the pomp and circumstance of the epos, 
has completely the external character of an epic heroic poem ; a cha- 
racter ludicrously in contrast with the subject. Notwithstanding many 
ingenious conceits, it is not, on the whole, remarkable for vigour of 
poetical conception, and the introduction falls far short of the genuine 
tone of the Homeric epos, so that everything tends to show that the 
Batrachomyomachia is a production of the close of this era. This sup- 
position is confirmed by the tradition that Pigres, the brother of the 
Halicarnassian tyrant Artemisia, and consequently a contemporary of the 
Persian war, was the author of this poem J, although at a later period of 
antiquity, in the time of the Romans, the Batrachomyomachia was 
ascribed without hesitation to Homer himself. 

* Ch. x. § 7. f Ap. Athen. xv. p. 698, B. 

I The passage of Plutarch de Malign. Herod, c. 43. ought to be written as fol- 
lows : — T'tXo; Vi Kufaftivovs h TlXa.rata.7i ayvoyjirai fJ^Xf 1 fsXaw? rov ayuva <rovs"EXXwvas, 
ui<t7rio (Zar(>uxoftut>fAa%ia; yivoftivns (»jv lliy^»s o 'Agrtfiirius tv 'i<rs<ri <pfaiZ,uv xa) tpXvapui 
'iyga^iv) 7\ ffiwry dice,yuv'i<raa6ut ffvvhfiivuv,'tva XaSutu rob; uXXov;. 

Concerning Pigres see Suidas, who, however, confounds the later with the earlier 
Artemisia. 



l2 



1 14 HISTORY OF THE 



CHAPTER XII. ' 

$ i. Transition from the Epos, through the Elegy and Iambus, to Lyric Poetry; 
connexion of Lyric Poetry with Music. — § 2. Founders of Greek Music ; Ter- 
pander, his descent and date. — § 3. Terpander's invention of the seven-stringed 
Cithara. — $ 4. Musical scales and styles. — § 5. Nomes of Terpander for sing- 
ing to the Cithara; their rhythmical form. — §6. Olympus, descended from an 
ancient Phrygian family of flute-players. — § 7. His influence upon the develop- 
ment of the music of the flute and rhythm among the Greeks. — § S.His influence 

; confined to music. — $ 9. Thaletas, his age. — § 10. His connexion with ancient 
Cretan worships. Paeans and hyporchemes of Thaletas. — 6 11. Musicians of the 
succeeding period — Clonav, Hierax, Xenodamus, Xenocritus, Polymnestus, Saca- 
das. — § 12, State of Greek Music at this period. 

J 1. When the epic, elegiac, and iambic styles had been perfected in 
Greece, the forms of poetry seemed to have become so various, as scarcely 
to admit of further increase. The epic style, raised above the ordinary 
range of human life, had, by the exclusive sway which it exercised for 
centuries, and the high place which it occupied in general opinion, laid a 
broad foundation for all future Greek poetry, and had so far influenced its 
progress that, even in those later styles which differed the most widely from 
it, we may, to a certain extent, trace an epic and Homeric tone. Thus 
the lyric and dramatic poets developed the characters of the heroes 
celebrated in the ancient epic poetry ; so that their descriptions appeared 
rather to be the portraits of real persons than the conceptions of the 
individual poet. It was not till the minds of the Greeks had been ele- 
vated by the productions of the epic muse, that the genius of original 
poets broke loose from the dominion of the epic style, and invented 
new forms for expressing the emotions of a mind profoundly agitated 
by passing events ; with fewer innovations in the elegy, but with 
greater boldness and novelty in the iambic metre. In these two styles 
of poetry, — the former suited to the expression of grief, the latter to 
the expression of anger, hatred, and contempt — Greek poetry entered the 
domain of real life. 

Yet a great variety of new forms of poetry was reserved for the 
invention of future poets. The elegy and the iambus contained the 
germs of the lyric style, though they do not themselves come under 
that head. The "principal characteristic of lyric poetry is its connexion 
with music, vocal as well as instrumental. This connexion, indeed, 
existed, to a certain extent, in epic, and still more in elegiac and 
iambic poetry; but singing was not essential in those styles. Such 
B recitation by a rhapsodist, as was usual for epic poetry, also served, 
at least in the beginning, for elegiac, and in great part for iambic 
verses. Singing and a continued instrumental accompaniment are appro 






LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 149 

priate, where the expression of feeling or passion is inconsistent with 
a more measured and equable mode of recitation. In the attempt to 
express these impulses, the alternation of high and low tones would 
naturally give rise to singing. Hence, with the fine sense of harmony 
possessed by the Greeks, there was produced a rising and falling in the 
rhythm, which led to a greater variety and a more skilful arrangement 
of metrical forms. Moreover, as the expression of strong feeling 
required more pauses and resting-places, the verses in lyric poetry 
naturally fell into strophes, of greater or less length ; each of which 
comprised several varieties of metre, and admitted of an appropriate 
termination. This arrangement of the strophes was, at the same time, 
connected with dancing; which was naturally, though not necessa- 
rily, associated with lyric poetry. The more lively the expression, the 
more animated will be the gestures of the reciter ; and animated and 
expressive movements, which follow the rhythm of a poem, and corre- 
spond to its metrical structure, are, in fact, dancing. 

The Greek lyric poetry, therefore, was characterized by the expres- 
sion of deeper and more impassioned feeling, and a more swelling and 
impetuous tone, than the elegy or iambus ; and, at the same time, the 
effect was heightened by appropriate vocal and instrumental music, 
and often by the movements and figures of the dance. In this union 
of the sister arts, poetry was indeed predominant; and music and dancing 
were only employed to enforce and elevate the conceptions of the higher 
art. Yet music, in its turn, exercised a reciprocal influence on poetry ; 
so that, as it became more cultivated, the choice of the musical measure 
decided the tone of the whole poem. In order, therefore, that the cha- 
racter of the Greek lyric poetry may be fully understood, we will prefix 
an account of the scientific cultivation of music. Consistently with 
this purpose we should limit our attention to the general character 
of the music of the ancient Greeks, even if the technical details of the 
art, notwithstanding many able attempts to explain them, were not still 
enveloped in great obscurity. 

§ 2. The mythical traditions of Orpheus, Philammon, Chrysothemis, 
and other minstrels of the early times being set aside, the history of 
Greek music begins with Terpander the Lesbian. Terpander appears 
to have been properly the founder of Greek music. He first reduced to 
rule the different modes of singing which prevailed in different coun- 
tries, and formed, out of these rude strains, a connected system, from 
which the Greek music never departed throughout all the improve- 
ments and refinements of later ages. Though endowed with an inven- 
tive mind, and the commencer of a new era of music, he attempted 
no more than to systematize the musical styles which existed in the tunes 
of Greece and Asia Minor. It is probable that Terpander himself 
belonged to a family who derived their practice of music from the ancient 
Pierian bards of Becotia; such an inheritance of musical skill is quite 



[50 HISTORY OF THE 

conformable to the manners and institutions of the early Greeks*. The 
Italians of Lesbos had their origin in Bceotiaf, the country to which 
the worship of the Muses and the Thracian hymns belonged {; and 
they probably brought with them the first rudiments of poetry. This 
migration of the art of the Muses is ingeniously expressed by the legend 
that, after the murder of Orpheus by the Thracian Maenads, his head 
und lyre were thrown into the sea, and borne upon its waves to the 
island of Lesbos ; whence singing and the music of the cithara flourished 
in this, the most musical of islands §. The grave supposed to contain 
the head of Orpheus was shown in Antissa, a small town of Lesbos ; 
and it was thought that in that spot the nightingales sang most 
sweetly ||. In Antissa also, according to the testimony of several ancient 
writers, Terpander was born. In this way, the domestic impressions 
and the occupations of his youth may have prepared Terpander for the 
great undertaking which he afterwards performed. 

The date of Terpander is determined by his appearance in the mother 
country of Greece : of his early life in Lesbos nothing is known. The 
first account of him describes him in Peloponnesus, which at that time 
surpassed the rest of Greece in political power, in well-ordered govern- 
ments, and probably also in mental cultivation. It is one of the most 
certain dates of ancient chronology, that in the 26th Olympiad (b. c. 
676) musical contests were first introduced at the feast of Apollo Car- 
neius, and at their first celebration Terpander was crowned victor. 
Terpander was also victor four successive times in the musical contests 
at the Pythian temple of Delphi, which were celebrated there long before 
the establishment of the gymnastic games and chariot races (01. 47), 
but which then recurred every eight, and not every four years^f . These 
Pythian victories ought probably to be placed in the period from the 
27th to the 33rd Olympiad. For the 4th year of the 33rd Olympiad 
645 b. c.) is the time at which Terpander introduced among the Lace- 
daemonians his nomes for singing to the cithara, and generally reduced 
music to a system**. At this time, therefore, he had acquired the 
greatest renown in his art by his most important inventions. In Lace- 

* There were in several of the Greek states, houses or gentes, yw, in which the 
performance of musical exhibitions, especially at festivals, descended as an heredi- 
tary privilege. Thus,^ at Athens, the playing of the cithara at processions belonged 
to the Eunids. The Eumolpids of Eleusis were originally, as the name proves, a gens 
of singers of hymns (see above, p. 25, ch. iii. § 7). The flute-players of Sparta con- 
tinued their art and their rights in families. Stesichorus and Simonides also be- 
longed to musical families, as we will show below. 

^ + Ch.i.$5(p. 9). J Chap.ii. §8. 

§ xuffiu* 3' itrr)v aetlordrt}, says Phanocles, the elegiac poet, who gives the most 
elegant version of this legend (Stob. tit. Ixii. p. 399). 

(J Myrsilus of Lesbos, in Antigon. Caryst. Hist. Mirab. c. 5. In the account in 
Nicomachus Geraes. Enchir. Harm. ii. p. 29. ed. Meibora. Antissa is mentioned on 
the same occasion. 

% Muller's Dorians, b. iv. ch. vi. § 2. 
** Marmor Parium, ep. xxxiv. 1. 49, compared with Plutarch de Musica, c. 9. 



LITERATURE OP A.NCIENT GREECE. 151 

daemon, whose citizens had from the earliest times been distinguished 
for their love of music and dancing, the first scientific cultivation of 
music was ascribed to Terpander * ; and a record of the precise time 
had been preserved, probably in the registers of the public games. 
Hence it appears that Terpander was a younger contemporary of Calli- 
nus and Archilochus; so that the dispute among the ancients, 
whether Terpander or Archilochus were the elder, must probably be 
decided by supposing them to have lived about the same time. 

§ 3. At the head of all the inventions of Terpander stands the seven - 
stringed cithara. The only accompaniment for the voice used by the 
early Greeks was a four-stringed cithara, the tetrachord; and this 
instrument had been so generally used, and held in such repute, that 
the whole system of music was always founded upon the tetrachord. 
Terpander was the first who added three strings to this instrument ; 
as he himself testifies in two extant verses f. u Disdaining the 
four-stringed song, we shall sound new hymns on the seven-stringed 
phorminx." The tetrachord was strung so that the two extreme strings 
stood to one another in the relation called by the ancients diatessaron, 
and by the moderns a, fourth; that is to say, the lower one made three 
vibrations in the time that the upper one made four. Between these two 
strings, which formed the principal harmony of this simple instrument, 
there were two others ; and in the most ancient arrangement of the 
gamut, called the diatonic, these two were strung so that the three 
intervals between these four strings produced twice a whole tone, and 
in the third place a semitone. Terpander enlarged this instrument by 
adding one tetrachord to another : he did not however make the highest 
tone of the lower tetrachord the lowest of the upper, but he left an 
interval of one tone between the two tetrachords. By this arrangement 
the cithara would have had eight strings, if Terpander had not left out 
the third string, which must have appeared to him to be of less import- 
ance. The heptachord of Terpander thus acquired the compass of an 
octave, or, according to the Greek expression, a diapason ; because the 
highest tone of the upper and the lowest of the lower tetrachord stood in 
this relation, which is the simplest of all, as it rests upon the ratio of 
1 to 2 ; and which was soon acknowledged by the Greeks as the funda- 
mental concord. At the same time the highest tone of the upper tetra- 
chord stands to the highest of the lower in the relation of the fifth, the 
arithmetical expression of which is 2 to 3 ; and in general the tones 
were doubtless so arranged that the simplest consonances after the 

* yi Tr^urn x.tt.ra.<rra.<rn rut -rtfi rhv pouffiKbv, says Plutarch de Musica, c. 9. 
t In Euclid, Introd. Harm. p. 19. Partly also in Strabo, xiii. p. 618; Clemens 
Alex. Strom, vi. p. 814, Potter. The verses are — 

'HfiiTs toi rirgdyrigvv a.*o<rri$ > a.rris uoi&hv 
'Errarovep ip'o^tyyt viov$ xihadwofAiv vpvovt- 



]52 HISTORY OP THE 

n — Qu( ; 8 t sav , the fourth and fifth— governed the whole*. 
Hence the heptachord of Terpander long remained in high repute^ and 
w.is employed by Pindar; although in his time the deficient string of 
the tower tetrachord had been supplied, and an octachord produced t* 

§ -\. It will be convenient in this place to explain the ditFerence 
between the scales (yiwi), and the styles or harmonies (rjOoVoi, 
ipfxoylai) of Greek music, since it is probable that they were regulated 
by Terpander, The musical scales are determined by the intervals 
between the four tones of the tetrachord. The Greek musicians describe 
three musical scales, viz., the diatonic, the chromatic, and the enhar- 
monic. In the diatonic, the intervals were two tones and a semi- 
tone ; and hence the diatonic was considered the simplest and most 
natural, and was the most extensively used. In the chromatic scale 
the interval is a tone and a semitone, combined with.two other semi- 
tones \. This arrangement of the tetrachord was also very ancient, 
but it was much less used, because a feeble and languid, though 
pleasing character, was ascribed to it. The third scale, the en- 
harmonic, was produced by a tetrachord, which, besides an interval 
of two tones, had also two minor ones of quarter-tones. This 
was the latest of all, and was invented by Olympus, who must 
have nourished a short time after Terpander §. The ancients greatly 
preferred the enharmonic scale, especially on account of its liveliness 
and force. But from the small intervals of quarter tones, the execution 
of it required great skill and practice in singing and playing. These 
musical scales were further determined by the styles or harmonies^ 
because on them depended, first, the position or succession of the inter- 
vals belonging to the several scales ||, and, secondly, the height and 
depth of the whole gamut. Three styles were known in very early 
times,— the Doric, which was the lowest, the Phrygian, the middle one, 
and the Lydian, the highest. Of these, the Doric alone is named from 
a Greek race; the two others are called after nations of Asia Minor, 
whose love for music, and particularly the flute, is well known. It is 
probable that national tunes were current among these tribes, whose 

* The string* of the heptachord of Terpander were called, beginning from the 
highest, Nffo-4, Ta.oa.MTi>), rafietftifffi, pion, kt%avis, arec£y<recrt}, vTeHryj. The intervals 
were I, 1, l&, 1, 1,£, if the heptachord was strung, according to the diatonic scale, 
in the Doric style. 

f In proof of the account of the heptachord given in the text, see Boeckh de 
Metris Pindari, iii.7, p. 205, sqq. 

' >f these short intervals, however, the one is greater than the other, the former 
being more, (he latter less, than a semitone. The first is called apotome, the other 

I ran ma. 

utarch de Musics, 7, 11, 20, 29, 33 ; a treatise full of valuable notices, 
but written with io little care that the author often contradicts himself. 

|| For example, whether the intervals of the diatonon are \, 1, 1, as in the Doric 
style, or 1, \, 1, as in the Phrygian, or 1, 1 £, as in the Lydian. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 153 

peculiar character was the origin of these styles. Yet their fixed 
and systematic relation to the Doric style must have been the work 
of a Greek musician, probably of Terpander himself, who, in his native 
island of Lesbos, had frequent opportunities of becoming acquainted 
with the different musical styles of his neighbours of Asia Minor. Thus 
a fragment of Pindar relates, that Terpander, at the Lydian feasts, had 
heard the tone of the pectis, (a Lydian instrument, with a compass of 
two octaves,) and had formed from it the kind of lyre which was called 
Barbiton *. The Lesbians likewise used a particular sort of cithara, 
called the Asiatic ('Aciac) ; and this was by many held to be the inven- 
tion of Terpander, by others to be the work of his disciple Cepion f. 
It is manifest that the Lesbian musicians, with Terpander at their head, 
were the means of uniting the music of Asia Minor with that of the 
ancient Greeks (which was best preserved among the Dorians in Pelopon- 
nesus), and that they founded on it a system, in which each style had its 
appropriate character. To the establishment of this character the. 
nomes (vojaoi) contributed, musical compositions of great simplicity an I 
severity, something resembling the most ancient melodies of our church 
music. The Doric style appears from the statements of all the wit- 
nesses to have had a character of great seriousness and gravity, pecu- 
liarly calculated to produce a calm, firm, collected frame of mind. "With 
regard to the Doric style (says Aristotle), all are agreed that it is the 
most sedate, and has the most manly character." The Phrygian style 
was evidently derived from the loud vehement styles of music employed 
by the Phrygians in the worship of the Great Mother of the gods and 
the Corybantes +. In Greece, too, it was used in orgiastic worships, 
especially in that of Dionysus. It was peculiarly adapted to the 
expression of enthusiasm. The Lydian had the highest notes of any 
of the three ancient styles, and therefore approached nearer to the 
female voice ; its character was thus softer and feebler than either of 
the others. Yet it admitted of considerable variety of expression, as 
the melodies of the Lydian style had sometimes a painful and me- 
lancholy, sometimes a calm and pleasing character. Aristotle (who, in 
his Politics, has given some judicious precepts on the use of music in 
education) considers the Lydian style peculiarly adapted to the musical 
cultivation of early youth. 

In order to complete our view of this subject, we will here give 
an account of the other styles of Greek music, although they were 

* In Athenauis, xvi. p. 635. There are great difficulties as to the sense of this 
much contesled passage. Pindar's meaning probably is, that Terpander formed 
the deep-resounding barbiton, by taking the lower octave from the pectis (ormagadis). 
Among the Greek poets, Sappho is said to have first used the pectis or magadis, 
then Anacreon. 

f Plutarch de Mus. 6. Anccd. Bekker, vol. i. p. 452. Compare Aristoph. Thesm. 
120. with the Scholia. 

X See ch.iii.§8. 



|54 HISTOnY OP THE 

Invented after the time of Terpander. Between the Doric and Phry- 
gian styles — with respect to the height and lowness of the tones, — 
the Ionic waa interpolated; and between the Phrygian and Lydian, 
the folic. The former is said to have had a languid and soft, but 
pathetic tone ; it was particularly adapted to laments. The latter was 
fitted for the expression of lively, and even impassioned feelings; it is 
best known from its use in the remains of the Lesbian poets and 
ol Pindar. To these five styles were then added an equal number 
with higher and lower tones, which were annexed, at their respective 
extremes, to the original system. The former were called Hyperdorian, 
II yperiastian, Hyperphrygian, &c. ; the others Hypolydian, Hypoaeolian, 
Ilvpophrygian, &c. Of these styles none belong to this period except 
those which approximate closely to the first five, viz., the Hyperlydian, 
and the Hyperdorian, which was also called Mixolydian, as bordering 
upon the Lydian. The invention of the former is ascribed to Polym- 
ncstus *, that of the latter to the poetess Sappho; this latter was pecu- 
liarly used for laments of a pathetic and tender cast. But the entire 
system of the fifteen styles was only brought gradually to perfection 
by the musicians who lived after the times of Pindar. 

§ 5. Another proof that Terpander reduced to a regular system the 
styles used in his time is, that he was the first who marked the dif- 
ferent tones in music. It is stated, that Terpander first added musical 
notes to poems t. Of his mode of notation, indeed, we know nothing ; 
that subsequently used by the Greeks was introduced in the time of Py- 
thagoras. Hence, in later times, there existed written tunes by Terpander, 
of the kind called nomes J, whereas the nomes of the ancient bards, Olen, 
Philammon, &c, were only preserved by tradition, and must there- 
fore have undergone many changes. These nomes of Terpander 
were arranged for singing and playing upon the cithara. It cannot, 
indeed, be doubted that Terpander made use of the flute, an instrument 
generally known among the Greeks in his time ; Archilochus, the con- 
temporary of Terpander, even speaks of Lesbian paeans being sung to 
the flute§ ; although the cithara was the most usual accompaniment for 
songs of this kind. But it appears, on the whole, from the accounts of the 
ancients, that the cithara was the principal instrument in the Lesbian 
music. The Lesbian school of singers to the cithara maintained its 
pre-eminence in the contests, especially at the Carnean festival at Sparta, 
up to Pericleitus, the last Lesbian who was victorious on the cithara, 

* See §11. 
f HiXot T£<vr«; Ti^iif/iKt roli$ *owf*ii<rt, says Clemens Alex. Strom, i. p. 364, B. 

T«» T'tgTcivigov xtOa^cahtKuv Totnrrtv ovra. vo/u.uv xutu vopov 'ixeeffrov vols 'i-rtffi <ro7f 

\aurou kcc) ro7s 'Opfyov f/i\vi -rtpihvTa, ahiv h ro7s uyvcriv. Plutarch de MtlS. 3, after 
Heraclides. 

\ Above, ch. hi. § 7. 
§ A.lri>{ \.\apx,uv <r{oi avXov Attrfitov •ruwovu, Archilochus in Athen. v. p. 180, E. fr. 58. 
Gaiaford. It may also be conjectured from the mutilated passage of the Parian 
marble, Ep. 35, that Terpander practised flute-playing. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 155 

and who lived before Hipponax (Olym. 60)*. Probably some of these 
nomes of Terpander were improvements on ancient tunes used in 
religious rites ; and this appears to be the meaning of the statement 
that some of the nomes noted down by Terpander were invented by the 
ancient Delphic bard Philammon. Others seem to have grown out of 
popular songs, to which the names of iEolic and Boeotian nomes allude f. 
The greater number were probably invented by Terpander himself. 
These nomes of Terpander were finished compositions, in which a cer- 
tain musical idea was systematically worked out ; as is proved by the 
different parts which belonged to one of them J. 

The rhythmical form of Terpander s compositions was very simple. 
He is said to have added musical notes to hexameters §. In particular 
he arranged passages of the Homeric poems (which hitherto had only 
been recited by rhapsodists) to a musical accompaniment on the cithara ; 
he also composed hymns in the same metre, which probably resembled 
the Homeric hymns, though with somewhat of the lyric character ||. 
But the nomes of Terpander can scarcely all have had the simple uni- 
form rhythm of the heroic hexameter. That they had not, is proved 
by the names of two of Terpander's nomes, the Orthian and the 
Trochaic ; so called (according to the testimony of Pollux and other 
grammarians) from the rhythms. The latter was, therefore, composed 
in trochaic metre ; the former in those orthian rhythms, the peculiarity 
of which consists in a great extension of certain feet. There is like- 
wise a fragment of Terpander, consisting entirely of long syllables, in 
which the thought is as weighty and elevated as the metre is solemn 
and dignified. " Zeus, first cause of all, leader of all ; Zeus, to thee 
I send this beginning of hymns ^f." Metres composed exclusively of 
long syllables were employed for religious ceremonies of the greatest 
solemnity. The name of the spondaic foot, which consisted of two long 
syllables, was derived from the libation (cnrovfirj), at which a sacred 
silence was observed**. Hymns of this kind were often sung to Zeus 
in his ancient sanctuary of Dodona, on the borders of Thesprotia and 
Molossia ; and hence is explained the name of the Molossian foot, con- 

* Hence in Sappho, fr. 52, Bloraf. (69, Neue), the Lesbian singer is called -rippo^os 
a,\Xoha,To7<riv. 

f Plutarch de Mus. 4, Pollux iv. 9. 65. 

X These, according to Pollux, iv. 9, 66, were strata, ftirecg%u, xarar^oTTa, fiiraxxroL- 
rgoTet, op.Qako$ } tr<P(>a,y)f , \iri\oyos, 

§ See, particularly, Plutarch de Mus. 3 ; cf. 4. 6. ; Proclus in Photius, Biblioth. 
p. 523. 

|| It is, however, possible that some of the smaller Homeric hymns may have 
been proems of this kind by Terpander. For example, that to Athene (xxviii.) 
appears to be peculiarly fitted for singing to the cithara. 

C" Ziu, vrcivruv ug%cc } •rxvrwv ayvru^ 

ZiZ, <roi crifttfu raurxv vfivuv u^av. 
In Clemens Alex. Strom, vi. p. 784, who also states that this hymn to Zeus was 
set hi the Doric style. 



U,(i HISTORY OF THE 

usiiag oflhite bng syllables, by which the fragment of Terpander 
OUghl probably to be measured. 

6 0. The accounts of Terpander's inventions, and the extant remains 
of his uomes, however meagre and scanty, give some notion of his 
merits as the father of Grecian music. Another ancient master, how- 
c\er, the Phrygian musician, Olympus, so much enlarged the system 
of the Greek music, that Plutarch considers him, and not Terpander, 
IS the founder of it. 

The date, and indeed the whole history of this Olympus, are involved 
in obscurity, by a confusion between him (who is certainly as historical 
as Terpander) and a mythological Olympus, who is connected with 
the first founders of the Phrygian religion and worship. Even Plu- 
tarch, who in his learned treatise upon music has marked the distinc- 
tion between the earlier and the later Olympus, has still attributed 
inventions to the fabulous Olympus which properly belong to the his- 
torical one. The ancient Olympus is quite lost in the dawn of mythical 
legends ; he is the favourite and disciple of the Phrygian Silenus, Mar- 
syas, who invented the flute, and used it in his unfortunate contest with 
the cithara of the Hellenic god Apollo. The invention of nomes could 
only be ascribed to this fabulous Olympus, and to the still more ancient 
Hyagnis, as certain nomes were attributed by the Greeks to Olen and 
Philammon ; that is to say, certain tunes were sung at festivals, which 
tradition assigned to these nomes. There was also in Phrygia a family 
said to be descended from the mythical Olympus, the members of which, 
probably, played sacred tunes on the flute at the festivals of the Magna 
Mater: to this family, according to Plutarch, the later Olympus 
belonged. 

§ 7. This later Olympus stands midway between his native country 
Phrygia and the Greek nation. Fhrygia, which had in general little 
connexion with the Greek religion, and was remarkable only for its 
enthusiastic rites and its boisterous music, obtained, by means of 
Olympus, an important influence upon the music, and thus upon the 
poetry, of Greece. But Olympus would not have been able to exercise 
this influence, if he had not, by a long residence in Greece, become 
acquainted with the Greek civilization. It is stated that he produced 
new tunes in the Greek sanctuary of Pytho ; and that he had disciples 
who were Greeks, such as Crates and Hierax the Argive*. It was by 
means of Olympus that the flute attained an equal place in Greek music 
with the cithara ; by which change music gained a much greater com- 
pass than before. It was much easier to multiply the tones of the flute 
than those of the cithara; especially as the ancient flute-players were 
accustomed to play upon two flutes at once. Hence the severe censors 

* The former is mentioned by Plutarch de Mns. 7 ; the latter by the same 
writer, c. 26, and Pollux iv. 10. 79. Accordingly it is not probable that" this second 
Olympus was a mythical personage, or a collective appellation of the Phrvjnan 
music in its improved state. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 157 

of music in antiquity disapproved of the flute on moral grounds, since 
they considered the variety of its tones as calculated to seduce the 
player iuto an unchaste and florid style of music. Olympus also in- 
vented and cultivated the third musical scale, the enharmonic ; the 
powerful effects of which, as well as its difficulties, have been already 
mentioned. His nomes were accordingly auletic, that is, intended for 
the flute, and belonged to the enharmonic scale. 

Among the different names which have been preserved, that of the 
Harmateios Nomos may be particularly mentioned, as we are able to 
form a tolerably correct idea of its nature. In the Orestes of Euripides, 
a Phrygian Eunuch in the service of Helen, who has just escaped the 
murderous hands of Orestes and Pylades, describes his dangers 
in a monody, in which the liveliest expression of pain and terror is 
blended with a character of Asiatic softness. This song, of which 
the musical accompaniment was doubtless composed with as much 
art as the rhythmical structure, was set to the harmatian nome, as 
Euripides makes his Phrygian say. This mournful and passionate 
music appears to have been particularly adapted to the talent and taste 
of Olympus. At Delphi, where the solemnities of the Pythian games 
turned principally upon the fight of Apollo with the Python, Olympus 
is said to have played a dirge in honour of the slain Python upon the 
flute and in the Lydian style*. A nome of Olympus played upon 
several flutes (t,vvav\ld) was well known at Athens. Aristophanes, in 
the beginning of his Knights, describes the two slaves of Demus as 
giving utterance to their griefs in this tune. But from the esteem in 
which Olympus was held by the ancients, it seems improbable that ,all 
his compositions were of this gloomy character; and we may therefore 
fairly attribute a greater variety to his genius. His nome to Athene 
probably had the energetic and serene tone which suited the worship of 
this goddess. Olympus also shows great richness of invention in his 
rhythmical forms, and particularly in such as seemed to the Greeks 
expressive of enthusiasm and emotion. It appears probable from 
a statement in Plutarch, that he introduced the rhythm of the songs 
to the Magna Mater, or Galliambi f. The Atys of Catullus shows what 
an impression of melancholy, beauty and tenderness this metre was capa- 
ble of producing, when handled by a skilful artist. 

A more important fact, however, is, that Olympus introduced not 
only the third scale of music, but also a third class of rhythms. All 

* With this is connected the account that Olympus the Mysian cultivated the 
Lydian style, IpiXorixwiv. Clem. Alex. Strom, i.p.363. Potter. 

f The passage of Plutarch de Mnsica, c. x\\k., ku) rlv %»ouov (pv/lpov), Z toXXu 
xi%ewr.ui lv reig M»jw»«j, probably refers to the 'Iuviko; umaXufuvo;, which, on account 
of the prevalence of trochees in it, might probably be considered as belonging to the 

%O£i70{ pvfftOf. 



158 HISTORY OP THE 

the early rhythmical forms are of two kinds*, the equal (to-ov), in which 
the inifl is equal to the thesis; and the double (SnrXamov), in which 
the arsis is twice as long as the thesis. The former is the basis of the 
hexameter, the latter of the chief part of the poetry of Archilochus. 
The equal rhythm is most appropriate, when a calm composed state of 
mind is to be expressed, as there is a perfect balance of the arsis and 
thesis. The double rhythm has a rapid and easy march, and is 
therefore adapted to the expression of passion, but not of great or 
elevated sentiments, the double arsis requiring no great energy "to 
carry forward the light thesis. Now, besides these, there is a third 
kind of rhythm, called, from the relation of the arsis to the thesis, 
one and a half (fifxioXiov) ; in which an arsis of two times answers to 

a thesis of three. The Cretan foot (iu ), and the multifarious class 

of pseons belong to this head (jLuuu,uoui_, &c), to which .last the 
theoretical writers of antiquity ascribe much life and energy, and at 
the same time, loftiness of expression. That the poets and musicians 
considered it in the same light may be inferred from the use which they 
made of it. Olympus was the first who cultivated this rhythm, as we 
learn from Plutarch, and it is almost needless to remark that this exten- 
sion of the rhythms agrees with the other inventions of Olympus f. 

§ 8. It appears, therefore, that Olympus exercised an important 
influence in developing the rhythms, the instrumental music, and the 
musical scales of the Greeks, as well as in the composition of numerous 
nomes. Yet if we inquire to what words his compositions were arranged, 
we can find no trace of a verse written by him. Olympus is never, like 
Terpander, mentioned as a poet ; he is simply a musician \. His 
nomes, indeed, seem to have been originally executed on the flute alone, 
without singing; and he himself, in the tradition of the Greeks, was 
celebrated as a flute-player. It was a universal custom at this time to 
select the flute-players for the musical performances in Greek cities 
from among the Phrygians : of this nation, according to the testimony 
of Athenaeus, were Iambus, Adon and Telos, mentioned by the Lacedae- 
monian lyric poet Alcman, and Cion, Codalus, and Babys, mentioned 
by Hipponax. Hence, for example, Plutarch says, that Thaletas took 
the Cretan rhythm from the flute-playing of Olympus §, and thus 
acquired the fame of a good poet. Since Olympus did not properly 
belong to the Greek literature, and did not enter the lists with the poets 

* Above, chap. xi. § 8. 

f According to Plutarch de Mus. c. 29. Some also ascribe to Olympus the 
~Bax%uo( fv6pli («-'-), which belongs to the same family, though its form makes 
a less pleasing impression. 

I Suidas attributes to him /^.ixn and lXiyt7ai, which may be a confusion between 
compositions in the lyric and elegiac style and poetical texts. 

§ixr*s'OXvfi*6uav\wtus, Plutarch de Mus. c. 10 ; cf.c. 15. Hence also, inc. 7, an- 
te tic nomes are ascribed to Olympus; but in c. 3 the first aulodic nomes are ascribed 
to Clonas. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 159 

of Greece, it is natural that his precise date should not have been 
recorded. His date, however, is sufficiently marked by the advances of 
the Greek music and rhythm due to his efforts ; and the generation to 
which he belonged can thus be determined. For, as it appears both 
from the nature of his inventions and from express testimony that 
music had made some progress in his time, he must be later than Ter- 
pander; on the other hand, he must be prior to Thaletas, according to 
the statement just mentioned ; so that he must be placed between the 
30th and 40th Olympiads (b. c. 660—20) *. 

§ 9. Thaletas makes the third epoch in the history of Greek music. 
A native of Crete, he found means to express in a musical form the 
spirit which pervaded the religious institutions of his country, by which 
he produced a strong impression upon the other Greeks. He seems 
to have been partly a priest and partly an artist ; and from this circum- 
stance his history is veiled in obscurity. He is called a Gortynian, but 
is also said to have been born at Elyrus ; the latter tradition may per- 
haps allude to the belief that the mythical expiatory priest Carmanor 
(who was supposed to have purified Apollo himself from the slaughter of 
the Python, and to have been the father of the bard Chrysothemis) 
lived at Tarrha, near Elyrus, in the mountains on the west of Crete. 
It is at any rate certain that Thaletas was connected with this ancient 
seat of religious poetry and music, the object of which was to appease 
passion and emotion. Thaletas was in the height of his fame invited 
to Sparta, that he might restore peace and order to the city, at that 
time torn by intestine commotions. In this attempt he is supposed to 
have completely succeeded ; and his political influence on this occasion 
gave rise to the report that Lycurgus had been instructed by him f. 
In fact, however, Thaletas lived several centuries later than Ly- 
curgus, having been one of the musicians who assisted in perfecting 
Terpander's musical system at Sparta, and giving it a new and fixed 
form. The musicians named by Plutarch, as the arrangers of this 
second system, are Thaletas of Gortyna, Xenodamus of Cythera, Xeno- 
critus the Locrian, Polymnestus of Colophon, Sacadas of Argos. 
Among these, however, the last named are later than the former j as 
Polymnestus composed for the Lacedaemonians a poem in honour of 
Thaletas, which is mentioned by Pausanias. If, therefore, Sacadas was 
a victor in the Pythian games in Olymp. 47, 3 (b. c. 590), and if 
this may be taken as the time when the most recent of these musi- 
cians flourished, the first of them, Thaletas, may be fixed not later 

* Accordingto Suidas, Olympus was contemporary with a king Midas, the son of 
Gordius ; but this is no argument against the assumed date, as the Phrygian kings, 
down to the time of Croesus, were alternately named Midas and Gordius. 

f Nevertheless Strabo, x. p. 481, justly calls Thaletas a legislative man. Like the 
Cretan training in general (>Elian V. H. ii. 39,) he doubtless combined poetry and 
music with a measured and well-ordered conduct. 



ICO HISTORY OP THE 

than the 40th Olympiad (». c. 620); which places him in the right rela- 
tion to Terpander and Olympus*. 

£ 10. We now return to the musical and poetical productions of 
Thaletas, which were connected with the ancient religious rites of his 
country. In Crete, at the time of Thaletas, the predominating- worship was 
that of Apollo; the character of which was a solemn elevation of mind, 
a firm reliance in the power of the god, and a calm acquiescence in the 
order of things proclaimed by him. But it cannot be doubted that the 
ancient Cretan worship of Zeus was also practised, with the wild war 
dances of the Curetes, like the Phrygian worship of the Magna Mater t. 
The musical and poetical works of Thaletas fall under two heads — pceans 
and hyporchemcs. In many respects these two resembled each other; 
inasmuch as the paean originally belonged exclusively to "the worship of 
Apollo, and the hyporcheme was also performed at an early date in 
temples of Apollo, as at DelosJ. Hence paeans and hyporchemes were 
sometimes confounded. Their main features, however, were quite dif- 
ferent. The paean displayed the calm and serious feeling which pre- 
vailed in the worship of Apollo, without excluding the expression of an 
earnest desire for his protection, or of gratitude for aid already vouch- 
safed. The hyporcheme, on the other hand, was a dance of a mimic 
character, which sometimes passed into the playful and the comic. 
Accordingly the hyporchematic dance is considered as a peculiar species 
of the lyric dances, and, among dramatic styles of dancing, it is com- 
pared with the cordax of comedy, on account of its merry and sportive 
tone§. The rhythms of the hyporcheme, if we may judge from the 
fragments of Pindar, were peculiarly light, and had an imitative and 
graphic character. 

These musical and poetical styles were improved by Thaletas, who 
employed both the orchestic productions of his native country, and the 
impassioned music and rhythms of Olympus. It has already been re- 
marked that he borrowed the Cretan rhythm from Olympus, which doubt- 
less acquired this name from its having been made known by Thaletas 
of Crete. The entire class of feet to which the Cretan foot belongs, 
were called Pceons, from being used in paeans (or paeons). Thaletas 
doubtless gave a more rapid march to the paean by this animated and 
vigorous rhythm;. But the hyporchematic productions of Thaletas 
must have been still gayer and more energetic. And Sparta was the 

* Clinton, who, in Fast. Hellen. vol. 1. p. 199, tq. s places Thaletas before Ter- 
pander, rejects the most authentic testimony, that concerning the xuTcirrue,; of 
music at Sparta ; and moreover, does not allow sufficient weight to the far more 
artificial character of the music and rhythms of Thaletas. 

f KovtY-i; n hit tyXMfetlyfunt Io-^ysty.oi:. Hesiod, fr. 94. Goettlin°-. 
X Above, ch. iii. h 6. § Athen. xiv. p. 630, E. 

|| Fragments of a paean in paeons are preserved in Aristotle, Rhet. iii. 8, viz.— 
An/.oyivi;, ifa Avxixv, and Xovvtoxepcc "Eholti, vu.1 £uig. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 161 

country which at this time was best suited to the music of dancing-. 
The Gymnoptcdia, the festival of " naked youths," one of the chief 
solemnities of the Spartans, was well calculated to encourage the love of 
g'ymnastic exercises and dances among the youth. The boys in these 
dances first imitated the movements of wrestling and the pancration ; 
and then passed into the wild gestures of the worship of Bacchus *. 
There was also much jesting and merriment in these dancesf ; a fact 
which points to mimic representations in the style of the hyporcheme, 
especially as the establishment of dances and musical entertainments at 
the gymnopsedia is ascribed by Plutarch to the musicians, at the head 
of whom was Thaletas J. The Pyrrhic, or war-dance, was also formed 
by the musicians of this school, particularly by Thaletas* It was a 
favourite spectacle of the Cretans and Lacedaemonians ; and both these 
nations derived it from their ancestors, the former from the Curetes, 
the latter from the Dioscuri. It was accompanied by the flute, which 
could only have been the case after the music of the flute had been 
scientifically cultivated by the Greeks ; although there was a legend that 
Athene herself played the war-dance upon the flute to the Dioscuri §. 
It was a natural transition from the simple war-dance to imitations of 
different modes of fighting, offensive and defensive, and to the regular 
representation of mock fights with several Pyrrhichists. According to 
Plato, the Pyrrhic dance was thus practised in Crete ; and Thaietas, in. 
improving the national music of Crete, composed hyporchemes for the 
Pyrrhic dance. The rhythms which were chosen for the expression of 
the hurried and vehement movements of the combat were of course 
quick and changeable, as was usually the case in the hyporchematic 
poems; the names of some of the metrical feet have been derived from 
the rhythms employed in the Pyrrhic dance [| . 

§ 15. Terpander, Olympus, and Thaletas are distinguished by the 
salient peculiarities which belong to inventive genius. But it is difficult 
to find any individual characteristics in the numerous masters who 
followed them between the 40th and 50th Olympiads. It may, however, 
be useful to mention some of their names, in order to give an idea of 
the zeal with which the Greek music was cultivated, after it had passed 
out of the hands of its first founders and improvers. 

The first name we will mention is Clonas, of Thebes, or Tegea, not 

* These gymnopaedic dances, described by Athenaeus, xiv. p. 631, xv. p. 678, 
were evidently different from the yuftvovuthxh b'gxvcri;, which, according to the same 
Athenaeus, was the most solemn kind of lyric dance, and corresponded to the em- 
meleia among the dramatic dances. 

f Pollux iv. 14, 104. 

X Plutarch de Mus. 9. The ancient chronologists place the first introduction of 
the gymnopaedia somewhat earlier, viz. Olymp. 28. 4. (n. c. 665.) 

§ See Mliller's Dorians, book iv.ch. 6. § 6 and 7. 

|| Not only the Pyrrhic (oo), but also the proceleusmatic, or challenging, foot 
(oooo), refers to the Pyrrhic dance. The latter ought probably to be considered 
a resolved anapaest ; and so the hbwku; pvfyog is removed to the anapaestic measure. 

M 



1G2 HISTORY OF THE 

much later than Terpander, celebrated as a composer of aulodic nomes, 
one of which was called Elegos, on account of its plaintive tone. The 
poetry, which was set to his compositions and sung to the flute, chiefly 
consisted of hexameters and elegiac distichs, without any artificial rhyth- 
mical construction. Secondly, Hierax, of Argos, a scholar of Olympus, 
was a master of flute-playing ; he invented the music to which the Argive 
maidens performed the ceremony of the Flower-carrying (avdevfiopia), 
in the temple of Here; and another in which the youths represented 
the graceful exercises of the Pentathlon. We will next enumerate the 
masters who, after Thaletas, contributed the most towards the new 
arrangement of music irt Sparta. These were Xenodamus, a Lacedae- 
monian of Cythera, a poet and composer of paeans and hyporchemes, 
like Thaletas ; Xenocritus, from Locri Epizephyrii in Italy, a town 
noted for its taste in music and poetry. To this Xenocritus is attributed 
a peculiar Locrian, or Italian measure, which was a modification of the 
iEolic*; as the Locrian love-songs t approached closely to the iEolic 
poetry of Sappho and Erinna. Erotic'poems, however, are not attributed 
to Xenocritus, but dithyrambs, the subjects of which were taken from 
the heroic mythology ; a peculiar kind of poetry, the origin and style 
of which we will endeavour to describe hereafter. Lastly, there are to 
be mentioned Polymnestus, of Colophon +, and Sacadas, of Argos ; 
the former was an early contemporary of Alcman, who improved upon 
the aulodia of Clonas, and exceeded the limits of the five styles §. 
He appears, in general, to have enlarged the art of music, and was 
particularly distinguished in the loud and spirited Orthian nome. 
Sacadas was celebrated as having been victorious in flute-playinc;, at 
the first three Pythian games, at which the Amphictvons presided 
(Olymp. 47. 3; 49.3; 50. 3; b. c. 590, 582, 578). He first 
played the flute in the Pythian style, but without singing. He left this 
branch of the art to Echembrotus, an Arcadian musician, who, in the 
first Pythiad, gained the prize for accompanying the voice with the 
flute. But, according to Pausanias, this connexion of flute-playing 
and singing seemed, from its mournful and gloomy expression, so 
unsuited to the Pythian festival— a joyful celebration of victory,—' that 
the Amphictyons abolished this contest after the first time. ' With 
regard to Sacadas, and the state of music in his time, he is stated to have 
been the inventor of the tripartite nome (rptfiep^ ^oc^ in which one 
strophe was set in the Doric, the second in the Phrygian, the third in 
the Lydian style; the entire character of the music and poetry beiner, 
doubtless, changed with the change of the style. 
* Boeckh de Metris Pind. p. 212, 225, 241 279. 

.-a ttr&t&^t? de Mus c - 29 ' 1,,hou « h £&&•— ■» 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE, 163 

§ 12. By the efforts of these masters, music appears to have been 
brought to the decree of excellence at which we find it in Pindar's 
time ; it was then perfectly adapted to express the general course of any 
feeling-, to which the poet could give a more definite character and 
meaning-. For however imperfect the management of instrumental 
music and the harmonious combination of different voices and instru- 
ments may have been among the ancient Greeks, nevertheless the Greek 
musicians of this time had solved the great problem of their art, viz., 
that of giving an appropriate expression to the different shades of feel- 
ing. It was in Greece the constant endeavour of the great poets, the 
best thinkers, and even of statesmen who interested themselves in the 
education of youth, to give a good direction to music ; they all dreaded 
the increasing prevalence of a luxuriant style of instrumental music, and 
an unrestricted flight in the boundless realms of harmony. But these 
efforts could only for a while resist the inclinations and turbulent de- 
mands of the theatrical audiences * ; and the new style of music was 
established about the end of the Peloponnesian war. It will be here- 
after shown how strong an influence it exercised upon the poetry of 
Greece at that time. At the courts of the Macedonian kings, from 
Alexander downwards, symphonies were performed by hundreds of in- 
struments ; and from the statements of the ancients it would seem that 
instrumental music, particularly as regards wind instruments, was at 
that time scarcely inferior in force or number to our own. Yet amidst 
all these grand and brilliant productions, the best judges were forced to 
confess that the ancient melodies of Olympus, which were arranged for 
the simplest instruments, possessed a beauty to which the modern art, 
with all its appliances, could never attain' -f\ 

We now turn to lyric poetry, which, assisted by the musical improve 
ments of Terpander, Olympus, and Thaletas, began in the 40th Olym- 
piad (620 b. c.) a course, which, in a century and a half, brought it to 
the highest perfection. 

* The kxr^K^rU of Plato. f Plutarch de Mus, c. 18. 



m2 



1(34 HISTORY OF TH] 



CHAPTER XIII. 

$ I. Difference between the Lyric Poetry of the ^Eolians, and the Choral Lyric 
fWry of the Dorians. — § 2. Life and political Acts of Alcseus.— § 3. Their con- 
iu-xion with his Poetry. — ^ 4. The other subjects of his Poems. — § 5. Their me- 
tiical form. — () G. Life and moral character of Sappho. — § 7. Her Erotic Poetry 
to Phaon. — o 8. Poems of Sappho to women. — ^ 9. Hymenseals of Sappho. — 
ft li». Followers of Sappho, Damophila, Erinna. — § 11. Life of Anacreon. — § 12. 
ilis Poems to the youths at the Court of Pofycrates — § 13! His Love-songs to 

rss. — $ 14. Character of his versification 6 lo. Comparison of the later 

Anacreontics. — § 16. Scolia ; occasions on which they were sung, and their sub- 
jects. — o 17. Scolia of Hybrias and Callistratus. 

§ 1. The lyric poetry of the Greeks is of two kinds, which were culti- 
vated by different schools of poets; the name which is commonly given 
to poets living in the same country, and following the same rules of com- 
position. Of these two schools, one is called the Molic, as it flourished 
among the JEolians of Asia Minor, and particularly in the island of 
Lesbos ; the other the Doric, because, although it was diffused over the 
whole of Greece, yet it was first and principally cultivated by the Do- 
rians in Peloponnesus and Sicily. The difference of origin appears also 
in the dialect of these two schools. The Lesbian school wrote in the 
/Eolic dialect, as it is still to be found upon inscriptions in that island, 
while the Doric employed almost indifferently either a mitigated Do- 
rism, or the epic dialect, the dignity and solemnity of which was 
heightened by a limited use of Doric forms. These two schools differ 
essentially in every respect, as much in the subject, as in the form and 
style of their poems ; and as in the Greek poetry generally, so here in 
particular, we may perceive that between the subject, form, and style, 
there is the closest connexion. To begin with the mode of recitation, the 
Doric lyric poetry was intended to be executed by choruses, and to be 
sung to choral dances, whence it is sometimes called choral poetry : on 
the other hand, the /Eolic is never called choral, because it was meant 
to be recited by a single person, who accompanied his recitation with a 
stringed instrument, generally the lyre, and with suitable gestures. 
The structure of the Doric lyric strophe is comprehensive, and often 
very artificial ; inasmuch as the ear, which might perhaps be unable to 
detect the recurring rhythms, was assisted by the eye, which could fol- 
low the different movements of the chorus^and thus the spectator was 
able to understand the intricate and artificial plan of the composition. 
The -Eolic lyric poetry, on the other hand, was much more limited, and 
either consisted of verses joined together (~6 vara (rrc X oy), or it formed 
of a few short verses, strophes in which the same verse is frequently re- 
peated, and the conclusion is e fleeted by a change in the versification, 
or by the addition of a short final verse. The strophes of the Doric 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 165 

lyric poetry were also often combined by annexing' to two strophes 
corresponding with one another, a third and different one called an 
epode. The origin of this, according* to the ancients, is, that the chorus, 
having* performed one movement during* the strophe, return to their 
former position during the antistrophe ; and they then remain motion- 
less for a time, during* which the epode is sung. The short strophes of 
the iEolic lyric poetry, on the other hand, follow each other in equal 
measure, and without being interrupted by epodes. The rhythmical 
structure of the choral strophes of the Doric lyric poetry is likewise 
capable of much variety, assuming* sometimes a more elevated, some- 
times a more cheerful character ; whilst in the iEolic, light and lively 
metres, peculiarly adapted to express the passionate emotion of an ex- 
citable mind, are frequently repeated. 

Choral poetry required an object of public and general interest, as 
the choruses were combined with religious festivals ; and if they were 
celebrated in private, they always needed a solemn occasion and cele- 
bration. Thoughts and feelings peculiar to an individual could not, 
with propriety, be sung* by a numerous chorus. Hence the choral lyric 
poetry was closely connected with the interests of the Greek states, 
either by celebrating their gods and heroes, and imparting a charm and 
dignity to the festal recreations of the people, or by extolling citizens 
who had acquired high renown in the eyes of their countrymen. It 
was also sometimes used at marriages or funerals ; — occasions in 
which the events of private life are brought into public notice. On the 
other hand, the iEolic lyric poetry frequently expresses thoughts and 
feelings in which only one mind can sympathize, and expresses them 
with such tenderness as to display the inmost workings of the heart. 
How would such impressions be destroyed by the singing of a chorus 
of many voices ! Even when political events and other matters of public 
interest were touched upon in the iEolic lyric poetry, they were not 
mentioned in such a manner as to invite general sympathy. Instead of 
seeking, by wise admonitions, to settle the disorders of the state, the 
poet gives expression to his own party feelings. Nevertheless, it is pro- 
bable that the iEolic poets sometimes composed poems for choral ex- 
hibition, for choruses were undoubtedly performed in Lesbos, as well as 
in other parts of Greece ; and although some ancient festival songs 
might have existed, yet there would naturally be a wish to obtain new 
poetry, for which purpose the labour of the poets in the island would 
be put in requisition. Several of the Lesbian lyric poems, of which 
we have fragments and accounts, appear to have been composed for 
choral recitation *. But the characteristic excellence of this lyric poetry 

* Especially the hymenreus of Pappho, from which the yoem of Catullus, 62, is 
imitated ; it was recited by choruses of young men and women; see below § 9. 
Choral dances had been usual, in connexion with the hymenreus, from the earliest 
times ; see above ch. ?, § 5. So likewise the fragment of Sappho, Kfitrcrai w cr<^' <£§', 
&c, No. 83, ed. Blomfield. No. 46, ed. Neue, alludes to some imitation of a Cretan 



HISTORY OF THE 

the expression oi' individual ideas and sentiments, with warmth and 
fanknett. UlSse sentiments found a natural expression in the native 
di&lect of these poets, the ancient iEolic, which has a character of sim- 
plicitv and fondness ; the epic dialect, the general language of Greek 
poetry, was only used sparingly, in order to soften and elevate this po- 
pular dialect. Unhappily the works of these poets were allowed to 
perish at a time when they had become unintelligible from the singu- 
laritv of their dialect, and the condensation of their thoughts. To this 
cause, and not to the warmth of their descriptions of the passion of love, 
[a to be attributed the oblivion to which they were consigned. For if lite 
rarv works had been condemned on moral grounds of this kind, the 
writings of Martial and Petronius, and many poems of the Anthology, 
would not exist ; while Alcseus and Sappho would probably be extant. 
As, however, the productions of these two poets have not been preserved, 
we must attempt to form as perfect an idea of them as can be obtained 
from the sources of information which are open to us. 

§ 2. The circumstances of the life of Alceus are closely connected 
with the political circumstances of his native city Mytilene, in the island 
of Lesbos. Alcseus belonged to a noble family, and a great part of his 
public life was employed in asserting the privileges of his order. These 
were then endangered by democratic factions, which appear to have 
placed ambitious men at their head, and to have given them powerful 
support, as happened about the same time in Peloponnesus. In many 
cases the demagogues obtained absolute, or (as the Greeks called it) 
tyrannical power. A tyrant of this kind in Mytilene was Melanchrus, 
who was opposed by the brothers of Alcseus, Antimenidas and Cicis, in 
conjunction with Pittacus, the wisest statesman of the time in Lesbos, 
and was slain by them in the 42d Olympiad, 612 b. c. At this time 
the Mytileneans were at war with foreign enemies, the Athenians, who, 
under Phrynon, had conquered and retained possession of Sigeum, a 
maritime town of Troas. The Mytileneans, among whom was Alcseus, 
were defeated in this war ; but Pittacus slew Phrynon in single combat, 
Olymp. 43. 3. 606 b. c. Mytilene henceforth was divided into parties, 
from the heads of which new tyrants arose, such as (according to 
Strabo) MyrsilttS, Megalagyrus, and the Cleanactids. The aristocratic 
party, to which Alcaeus and Antimenidas belonged, was driven out of 
Mytilene, and the two brothers then wandered about the world. Alcseus, 
being exiled, made long sea voyages, which led him to Egypt ; and 
Antimenidas served in the Babylonian army, probably in the war which 
ichadnezzar waged in Upper. Asia with the Egyptian Pharaoh 
Necho, and the states of Syria, Phoenicia, and Judaea, in the years from 

dance round the altar; and dances of this kind were, perhaps, often combined with 
the hymns of the yKolians ; see Anthol. Palat. 1, 189. Anacreon's poems were also 
\>y female choruses at nocturnal festivals, according to Critias ap. Athen. xiii. 
p. 000 D. b F 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 167 

b. c. 606 (01. 43. 3) to 584 (01. 49. 1), and longer*. Some time 
after this we again find the brothers in the neighbourhood of their native 
city, at the head of the exiled nobles, and trying to effect their return 
by force. Pittacus was then unanimously elected dictator by the people, 
to defend the constitution, (al&vfLv^ri]Q). The administration of Pit- 
tacus lasted, according to the accounts of ancient chronologers, from 
Olymp. 47. 3. (b. c. 590), to 50. 1. (b. c. 580). He was so fortunate 
as to overcome the exiled party, and to gain them over fry his clemency 
and moderation. He also (according to a well authenticated statement) 
was reconciled with Alcaeus ; and it is probable that the poet, after 
many wanderings, passed his latter days in the quiet enjoyment of his 
home. 

§ 3. In the midst of these troubles and perils, Alcaeus struck the 
lyre, not, like Solon, with a spirit of calm and impartial patriotism, to 
bewail the evils of the state, and 'to show the way to improvement, but to 
give utterance to the passionate emotions of his mind. When Myrsilus 
was about to establish a tyrannical government in Mytilene, Alcaeus 
composed the beautiful ode, in which he compares the state to a ship 
tossed about by the waves, while the sea has washed into the hold, and 
the sail is torn by the wind. A considerable fragment of this ode has 
been preserved f ; and we may also form some idea of its contents from 
the fine imitation of it by Horace, which, however, probably falls short 
of the original \. When Myrsilus dies, the joy of the poet knows no 
bounds. " Now is the time for carousing, now is the time for chal- 
lenging the guests to drink, for Myrsilus is dead §." Horace has also 
taken the beginning of this ode for one of his finest poems ||. After 
the death of Myrsilus, we find Alcaeus aiming the shafts of his poetry 
at Megalagyrus and the Cleanactids, on account of their attempts 
to obtain- illegal power ; although, according to Strabo, Alcaeus himself 
was not entirely guiltless of attempts against the constitution of Myti- 
lene. Even when Pittacus was chosen dictator by the people, the dis- 
content of the poet with the political state of his country did not cease ; 
on the contrary, Pittacus (who was esteemed by all a wise, moderate, 
and patriotic statesman, and who had clearly shown his republican 
virtue by resigning his power after a ten years' administration) now be- 
came the prime object of the vehement attacks of Alcaeus. He reproaches 
the people for having unanimously chosen the ignoble % Pittacus to be 
tyrant over the ill-fated city ; and he assails the dictator with vitupera 

* The battle of Carchemish, or Circesium, appears from Bcrosus to fall in 604 u. c, 
the year of Nabopolassar's death ; but 606 b. c, the date of the biblical chronology., 
is probably right. 

f Fragm. 2. Blomf. 2. Matth. cf. 3. 

X Carm. 1, 14. O navis referent — 

§ Fragm. 4. Blomf. 4. Matth. 

|| Carm. 1. 37. Nunc est bibendum — 

^[ rov KKKOTrar^ec UiTTdKov, Fragm, 23, Blomf. 5, Matth. 



l(-,s HISTORY OF THE 

ti\e epithets wh'ch appetl filter for iambic than for lyric poetry. Thus 
lie taunts him in words of the boldest formation, sometimes with his 
mean appearance, sometimes with his low and vulgar mode of life*. 
\^ compared with Pittacus, it seems that the poet now deemed the 
former tyrant Melanchrus, " worthy of the respect of the city f." 

In this class of his poems (called by the ancients his party poems, 
T7(im(irTTiK(\), Alca?us gave a lively picture of the political state of 
Mytilene, as ii appeared to his partial view. His war-songs express a 
stirring martial spirit, though they do not breathe the strict principles of 
military honour which prevailed among the Dorians, particularly in 
Sparta. He describes with joy his armoury, the walls of which glit- 
tered with helmets, coats of mail, and other pieces of armour, " which 
must now be thought upon, as the work of war is begun {." He 
speaks of war with courage and confidence to his companions in arms; 
there is no need of walls (he says), " men are the best rampart of the 
city § ;" nor does he fear the shining weapons of the enemy. " Em- 
blems on shields make no wounds ||." He celebrates the battles of his 
adventurous brother, who had, in the service of the Babylonians, slain a 
gigantic champion *f| ; and speaks of the ivory sword-handle which this 
brother had brought from the extremity of the earth, probably the pre- 
sent of some oriental prince **. Yet the pleasure he seems to have felt 
in deeds of arms did not prevent him from relating in one of his poems, 
how in a battle with the Athenians he had escaped indeed with his life, 
but the victors had hung up his castaway arms as trophies, in the 
temple of Pallas at Sigeumf -j\ 

§ 4. A noble nature, accompanied with strong passions, a variety of 
character frequent among the iEolians, appears in all the poetry of 
Alcaeus, especially in the numerous poems which sing the praises of 
love and wine. The frequent mention of wine in the fragments of 
Alcccus shows how highly he prized the gift of Bacchus, and how in- 
genious he was in the invention of inducements to drinking. Now it is 
the cold storms of winter which drive him to drink by the flame of the 

* In Diog. Lacrt. 1. 81. Fra^m. C. Matth. Thus he calls Pittacus gofoho*vfiet f , that 
is. who sups in the dark, and not in a room lighted with lamps and torches. 
f Fragm. 7. Blomf. 7. Matth. 
+ Fragm. 24. Blomf. 1. Matih. comp. helow 6 5. 
o Fragm. 9. Blcmf. 11,12. Matth. 
ragm. 13. Matth. 

«" The fragment in Strahoxiii. p. 617, (8G. Blomf. 8.Mahh.)liPsbeen thus emended 
by the author in Niebuhr's Rheinisches Museum, vol. i. p. 287.— K«} tov &hXQov 
AtTifiMtotti) it Qifn 'AXzdtos Bu/ZvXuvtois ffv[if4.a.%ovvra. nXi/rui f/Ayuv «^>.*v, xcu be crov^y 
ulrcvs fVTt/.txfc.t XTtimvra kv^u f/.u^arkv, as fr,tn, fZatrtXtiiov, -ruXaiaTuv uvoXiivovrK futat 
futtt vruyjuv krrl *ift*m, ( A\o\. for -tt'ivti) : that is, this royal champion only wanted 
a palm of five Greek cubits. 

** Fragm. 32. Blomf. 67. Matth. 

-it Fragm. &6. Blomf. 9. Matth. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 169 

hearth, as in a beautiful poem imitated by Horace * ; now the heat of 
the dog- star, which parches all nature, and invites to moisten the 
tongue with wine t. Another time it is the cares and sorrows of life for 
which wine is the best medicine J; and then again, it is joy for the 
death of the tyrant which must be celebrated by a drinking bout. Al- 
cu)us however does not consider wine-drinking as a mere sensual excite- 
ment. Thus he calls wine the drowner of cares § ; and, as opening the 
heart, it is a mirror for mankind ||. Still it may be doubted whether 
Alcaeus composed a separate class of drinking songs, (o-vpronm.) From 
the fragments which remain, and the imitations by Horace, it is more 
probable that Alcaeus connected every exhortation to drink with some 
reflection, either upon the particular circumstances of the time or upon 
man's destiny in general. 

It is much to be regretted that so little of the erotic poetry of Alcaeus 
has reached our time. What could be more interesting than the re 
lations between Alcaeus and Sappho ? of the poet with the poetess ? 
whilst on the part of Alcaeus love and respect for the noble and renowned 
maiden were in conflict. He salutes her in a poem, " Violet crowned, 
pure, sweetly smiling Sappho ;" and confesses to her in another that he 
wishes to express more, but shame prevents him. Sappho understands 
his meaning, and answers with maiden indignation, " If thy wishes 
were fair and noble, and thy tongue designed not to utter what is base, 
shame would not cloud thy eyes, but thou wouldst freely speak thy just 
desires^." That his poems to beautiful youths breathed feelings of the 
tenderest love may be conjectured from the well-known anecdote that 
he attributed a peculiar beauty to a small blemish in his beloved * *," 
The amatory poems, like the passages in praise of wine, are free from a 
tone of Sybaritic effeminacy, or merely sensual passion. Throughout 
his poems, we see the active restless man; and the tumult of war, the 
strife of politics, the sufferings of exile, and of distant wanderings, serve 
by contrast to heighten the effect of scenes of tranquil enjoyment. " The 
Lesbian citizen sang of war amidst the din of arms ; or, when he had 
bound the storlh-tossed ship to the shore, he sang Of Bacchus and the 
Muses, of Venus and her son, and Lycus, beautiful from his black hair 
and black eyes ft-" It isevidentthat poetry was not a mere pastime, or 
exercise of skill to Alcaeus, but a means of pouring out the inmost feel- 
ings of his soul. How superior are these poems to the odes of Horace ! 
which, admirable as they are for the refinement of the ideas and the 

* Fragm. 1. Bloraf. 27. Matth. Horat. Carm. I. 9. Vides ut alta. 

f Fragm. 18. Blomf. 28. Matth. J Fragm. 3. Blomf. 29. Matth. 

§ XaAx*>2&, Fragm. 20. Blomf. 31. Matth. 

|| Fr. 10. Blomf. 36, 37. Matth. 

•[ Fragm. 38. Blomf. and Sappho, Fragm. 30. In Matthise, Fragm. 41,42. 

** Cicero de Nat. D. 1.28. The cod. Glogan. has in Pericle pttero. 

ft Horat. Carm. I. 32. 5. s<jq. Cf. Schol.Pind. Olymp. x. 15, 



17(1 HISTORY OF THE 

beauty of the execution, yet are wanting- in that which characterized the 
.Kolie lyric poetry, the expression of vehement passion. 

There is little characteristic in the religious poetry of Alcaeus, 
which consisted of hymns to different deities. These poems (judging 
from a few specimens of them) had so much of the epic style, and con- 
tained so much diffuse and graphic narrative, that their whole structure 
must have been different from that of the poems designed for the ex- 
pression of opinions and feelings. In a hymn to Apollo, Alcaeus related 
the beautiful Delphic legend, that the youthful god, adorned by Zeus 
with a golden fillet, and holding the lyre, is carried in a car drawn by 
swans to the pious Hyperboreans, and remains with them for a year ; 
when, it being the time for the Delphic tripods to sound, the god about 
the middle of summer goes in his car to Delphi, while choruses of youths 
invoke him with poems, and nightingales and cicadae salute him with 
their songs*. Another hymn, that to Hermes, had manifestly a close 
resemblance to the epic hymn of the Homeric poet f : both relate the 
birth of Hermes, and his driving away the oxen of Apollo, as also the 
wrath of the god against the thief, B which however is changed into 
laughter, when he finds that, in the midst of his threats, Hermes has 
contrived to steal the quiver from his shoulder J. In another hymn the 
birth of Hephaestus was related. It appears from a few extant fragments 
that Alcaeus used the same metres and the same kind of strophes in the 
composition of these hymns, as for his other poems. The How of the 
narrative must, however, have been checked by these short verses and 
strophes. Still Alcaeus (as Horace also does sometimes) was able to 
carry the same ideas and the same sentence through several strophes. 
It is moreover probable, from the extraordinary taste displayed by the 
ancient poets, and by Alcaeus in particular, in the choice and manage- 
ment of metrical forms, that he would in his hymns have brought the 
verse and the subject into perfect harmony. 

§ 5. The metrical forms used by Alcaeus are mostly light and lively ; 
sometimes with a softer, sometimes with a more vehement character. 
They consist principally of yEolic dactyls, which, though apparently 
resembling the dactyls of epic poetry, yet are essentially unlike. Instead 
of depending upon the perfect balance of the Arsis and Thesis §, they 
admit the shortening of the former ; whence arises an irregularity which 
was distinguished by the ancient writers on metre by the name of 
disproportioned dactyls (dXoyot cclktvXoi). These dactyls begin with 
the undetermined foot of two syllables, which is called ^basis, and 
they flow on lightly and swiftly, without alternating with heavy spondees. 

* Fragm. 17. Matth. f Above ch. 7. § 5. 

% Fragm. 21. Matth. Horace, Carm. 1. 10. 9, has borrowed the last incident from 
Alcams: but the hymn of Alcaeus, which related at length the story of the theft, 
was on the whole different from the ode of Horace, which touches on many adven- 
tures of Hermes, without dwelling on any. 

6 Above ch. 4. § 4. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 171 

The choriambics of the iEolic lyric poets are composed on the same 
plan, as they have also the preceding' basis ; yet this metre always re- 
tains something of the stately tone which belongs to it. Hence Alceeus, 
and also Horace, whose metres are for the most part borrowed from 
him, composed poems of choriambic verses by simple repetition, without 
dividing them into strophes ; these poems have a somewhat loftier and 
more solemn tone than the rest. The Logacedic metre also belongs 
peculiarly to the iEolic lyric poets ; it is produced by the immediate 
junction of dactylic and trochaic feet, so that a rapid movement passes 
into a feebler one. This lengthened and various kind of metre was pe- 
culiarly adapted to express the softer emotions, such as tenderness, 
melancholy, and longing. Hence this metre was frequently used by the 
iEolians, and their strophes were principally formed by connecting 
logacedic rhythms with trochees, iambi, and jEolic dactyls. Of this 
kind is the Sapphic strophe, the softest and sweetest metre in the Greek 
lyric poetry, and which Alcseus seems t to have sometimes employed, as 
in his hymn to Hermes*. But the firmer and more vigorous tone of 
the metre, called after him the Alcaic, was better suited to the temper 
of his mind. The logacedic elements t of this metre have but little of 
their characteristic softness, and they receive an impulse from the iambic 
dipodies which precede them. Hence the Alcaic strophe is generally 
employed by these poets in political and warlike poems, and in all in 
which manly passions predominate. Alcseus likewise formed longer 
verses of logacedic feet, and joined them in an unbroken series, after the 
manner of choriambic and many dactylic verses. In this way he ob- 
tained a beautiful measure for the description of his armoury J. Among- 
the various metres used by Alcaeus, the last which we shall mention 



* That is to say, if the verse in fragm. 37. Blomf. 22. Matth. was the beginning 
of this hymn. According to Apollonius de pronom. p. 90. ed. Bekker, it runs thus : 
%x7gi, Kvk\dvu; o fiihts (as participle, with the .^olic accent, for pib~u; s ), a\ yd^ ftou 

f In these remarks it is assumed that the second part of the alcaic verse is not 
choriambic, or dactylic, but logacedic ; and that the whole ought thus to be arranged : 

o_/cj_o |_/oo_o»_ 
frl — °— y. |_£oo_o .. 
o_/ o_ J o_/ o _ 

Thus* it appears that the third verse of the strophe is a prolongation of the first 
half of the two first verses ; and that the fourth verse is a similar prolongation of 
the second half. The entire strophe is therefore formed of a combination of the two 
elements, the iambic and the logacedic. 

% Fragm. 24. Blomf. 1. Matth. The metre ought probably to be arranged as 
follows (the basis being marked X _) : 

X_ _/oo_o_|X_ _/ o cj _ o o I _/ orr 

Verses 3 and 4 ought to be read thus : xdXxtui It <7ra.irard.koii x^u-rroitrtv -rsgixtl/uivui 
ku^n^a.) xvdp.ihis, i. e. l< and brazen shining grieves conceal the pegs, to which they 
are suspended." -rao-irdXots is the ^Eolic accusative ; the dative in this dialect is al- 
ways 7rct<r<rdhoi(rt. 



I 79 HISTORY OF THE 

is the Ionic metre (Ionici a minori), which he used to express the emo- 
tions ofhia passionate nature*. 

§ (}. Wc come now to the other leader of the Lesbian school of 
poetry, Sappho, the object of the admiration of all antiquity. There is 
do doubt that she belonged to the island of Lesbos j and the question 
the] she was born in EresosorMytileue is best resolved by supposing 
that she went from the lesser city to the greater, at the time of her 
greatest celebrity. She was nearly contemporaneous with her country- 
man Alencus, although she must have been younger, as she was still 
alive in 01. j3. 568 b. c. About Ol. 4(5. 596 b. c, she sailed from 
Mytilene in order to take refuge in Sicily t, but the cause of her flight 
is unknown ; she must at that time have been in the bloom of her life. 
At a much later period she produced the ode mentioned by Herodotus, 
in which she reproached her brother Charaxus for having purchased 
Rhodopis I the courtesan from her master, and for having been induced 
by his love to emancipate her. This Rhodopis dwelt at Naucratis, and 
the event fails at a time when a frequent intercourse with Egypt had 
already been established by the Greeks. Now the government of 
Amasis (who permitted the Greeks in Egypt to dwell in Naucratis) 
began in Olymp. 52. 4. 569 b. c, and the return of Charaxus from the 
journey to Mytilene, where his sister received him with this reproachful 
and satirical ode, must have happened some years later. 

The severity with which Sappho censured her brother for his love for a 
courtesan enables us to form some judgment of the principles by which 
she o-uided her own conduct. For although at the time when she wrote this 
ode to Charaxus, the fire of youthful passion had been quenched in her 
breast ; yet she never could have reproached her brother with his love 
for a courtesan, if she had herself been a courtesan in her youth ; and 
Charaxus might have retaliated upon her with additional strength. 
Resides we may plainly discern the feeling of unimpeached honour clue 
to a freeborn and well educated maiden, in the verses already quoted, 
which refer to the relation of Alcaeus and Sappho. Alcaeus testifies 
that the attractions and loveliness of Sappho did not derogate from her 
moral worth when he calls her " violet-crowned, pure, sweetly smiling 
Sappho §." These genuine testimonies are indeed opposed to the ac- 
counts of many hiter writers, who represent Sappho as a courtesan. 
To refute this opinion, we will not resort to the expedient employed by 

* Fragm. 36. Blomf. G9. Matth. 

if/A bii}.a.v } lf*A Tarccv xcixortxrcdv <7ri%i%ei<rciv. 
Every ten of the«e Ionic feet formed a system, as Bentley has arranged Horat. 
( arm. III. 12. Horace, however, has not in this ode succeeded in catching the 
genuine tone of the metre. See above ch. 11. 6 7. 

T Mann. Par. ep. 30. comp. Ovid Her. xv. 51. The date of the Parian marble is 
lost; hut it must have been between Olymp. 44. 1. and 47.2. 

♦ II. 135, and see Athen. xiii. p. 590. Rhodopis or Doricha was the fellow slave 
of ASeop, who flourished at the same time (Olymp. 52). 
i-.t/^'. aytfy fi.M'/.r/J.iy.ua lairfoT. See above 6 4. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 173 

some ancient writers, who have attempted to distinguish a courtesan'of 
Eresos named Sappho from the poetess. A more probable cause of this 
false imputation seems to be, that later generations, and especially the re- 
fined Athenians, were incapable of conceiving- and appreciating the frank 
simplicity with which Sappho pours forth her feelings, and therefore 
confounded them with the unblushing- immodesty of a courtesan. In 
Sappho's time, there still existed among the Greeks much of that pri- 
mitive simplicity which appears in the wi.sh of Nausicaa in Homer that 
she had such a husband as Ulysses. That complete separation between 
sensual and sentimental love had not yet taken place which we find in 
the writings of later times, especially in those of the Attic comic poet? . 
Moreover the life of women in Lesbos was doubtless very different from 
the life of women at Athens and among the Ionians. In the Ionian 
States the female sex lived in the greatest retirement, and were exclu- 
sively employed in household concerns. Hence, while the men of Athens 
were distinguished by their perfection in every branch of art, none of 
their women emerged from the obscurity of domestic life. The secluded 
and depressed condition of the female sex among the Ionians of Asia 
Minor, originating in circumstances connected with the history of their 
race, had also become universal in Athens, where the principle on 
which the education of women rested was that just so much mental 
culture was expedient for women as would enable them to manage the 
household, provide for the bodily wants of the children, and overlook the 
female slaves ; for the rest, says Pericles in Thucydides *, " that woman 
is the best of whom the least is said among men, whether for evil or for 
good." But the iEolians had in some degree preserved the ancient 
Greek manners, such as we find them depicted in their epic poetry 
and mythology, where the women are represented as taking an active 
share not only in social domestic life, but in public amusements; and 
they thus enjoyed a distinct individual existence and moral character. 
There can be no doubt that they, as well as the women of the Dorian 
states of Peloponnesus and Magna Grecia, shared in the advantages 
of the general high state of civilization, which not only fostered poetical 
talents of a high order among women, but, as in the time of thePytha 
gorean league, even produced in them a turn for philosophical reflee 
tions on human life. But as such a state of the education and intellect 
of women was utterly inconsistent with Athenian manners, it is natural 
that women should be the objects of scurrilous jests and slanderous 
imputations. We cannot therefore wonder that women who had in 
any degree overstepped the bounds prescribed to their sex by the 
manners of Athens, should be represented by the licentious pen of the 
Athenian comic writers, as lost to every sentiment of shame or decency f. 

* II. 45. 

■f There were Attic comedies with the title of ''Sappho," by Amphis, Antiphanes, 
Ephippus, Timocles und Diphilus 5 and a comedy by Plato entitled " Phaon." 



1 7 [ HISTORY OP THE 

§ 7. [til certain that Sappho, in her odes, made frequent mention 
th, (o whom she gave her whole heart, while he requited her 
sion with cold indifference. But there is no trace whatever of her 
having named the object of her passion, or sought to win his favour by 
her beautiful verses. The pretended name of this youth, Phaon, 
although frequently mentioned in the Attic comedies*, appears not to 
have occurred in the poetry of Sappho. If Phaon had been named in 
her poetry, the opinion could not have arisen that it was the courtesan 
pho, and not the poetess, who was in love with Phaon f. Moreover, 
the marvellous stories of the beauty of Phaon and the love of the goddess 
Aphrodite for him, have manifestly been borrowed from the mythus 
of Adonis J. Hesiod mentions Phaethon, a son of Eos and Cephalus, 
who when a child was carried off by Aphrodite, and brought up as the 
guardian of the sanctuary in her temples §. This is evidently founded on 
the Cyprian legend of Adonis ; the Greeks, adopting this legend, appear 
to have given the name of Phaethon or Phaon to the favourite of 
Aphrodite ; and this Phaon, by various mistakes and misinterpretations, 
at length became the beloved of Sappho. Perhaps also the poetess 
. in an ode to Adonis, have celebrated the beautiful Phaon in such 
a manner that the verses may have been supposed to refer to a lover of 
her own. 

According to the ordinary account, Sappho, despised by Phaon, took 
the leap from the Leucadian rock, in the hope of finding a cure for the 
pains of unrequited love. But even this is rather a poetical image, 
a real event in the life of Sappho. The Leucadian leap was a re- 
ligious rite, belonging to the expiatory festivals of Apollo, which was 
celebrated in this as in other parts of Greece. At appointed times, 
criminals, selected as expiatory victims, were thrown from the high 
overhanging Took into the sea; they were however sometimes caught 
at the bottom, and, if saved, they were sent away from Leucadia ||. 
Una custom was applied in various ways by the poets of the time to 
the description of lovers. Stesichorus, in his poetical novel named 

* As in the verses of Menander in Strabo x. p, 452. 
ov B'/j Xiytrut Tpurvi Iwpt^u 
rev uTigxe/wrov 6-/i^uffu iduv' 
eitTT^uvrt <rt6o) pl^/ui 5rs<r£«; 
wro r'/iXstpuvou;. 
f In Athen. XIII. p. 596 E, and several ancient lexicographers. 
X Cratinus, the comic poet, in an unknown play in Athen. II. p. 69. D. relates 
that Aphrodite had concealed Phaon h 0g/&axivuii, among the lettuce. The same 
ad is also related of Adonis by others, in Atheneeus ; and it refers to the use of 
horti Adonidit. Concerning Phaon- Adonis, see also ./Elian V. H. xii. 18. Lu- 
DiaL Mort.9. Plin. N. H. xxii. 8. Servius ad Virg. JEn. III. 279. not to 
-n inferior authorities for this legend. 
,iod. Theog. 986. sq, woa-okov f*v%tov, according to the reading of Aris- 

Concerning the connexion of this custom with the worship of Apollo, see Mailer's 
borians. ]j. 11. ch. 11. § 10. V * 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 175 

Calyce, spoke of the love of a virtuous maiden for a youth who despised 
her passion; and in despair she threw herself from the Leucatlian rock. 
The effect of the leap in the story of Sappho (viz. the curing her of 
her intolerable passion) must therefore have been unknown to Stesi- 
chorus. Some years later, Anacreon says in an ode, " again casting 
myself from the Leucadian rock, I plunge into the grey sea, drunk with 
love *." The poet can scarcely by these words be supposed to say that 
he cures himself of a vehement passion, but rather means to describe the 
delirious intoxication of violent love. The story of Sappho's leap pro- 
bably originated in some poetical images and relations of this kim 
similar story is told of Aphrodite in regard to her lament for Adonis 1 
Nevertheless it is not unlikely that the leap from the Leucadian rock 
may really have been made, in ancient times, by desperate and frantic 
men. Another proof of the fictitious character of the story is that it 
leaves the principal point in uncertainty, namely, whether Sappho sur- 
vived the leap or perished in it. 

From what has been said, it follows that a true conception of the 
erotic poetry of Sappho, and of the feelings expressed in it, can only be 
drawn from fragments of her odes, which, though numerous, are for the 
most part very short. The most considerable and the best known of 
Sappho's remains is the complete ode J, in which she implores Aphi 
dite not to allow the torments and agitations of love to destroy her 
mind, but to come to her assistance, as she had formerly descended 
from heaven in her golden car drawn by "sparrows, and with radiant 
smiles on her divine face had asked her what had befallen her, and 
what her unquiet heart desired, and who was the author of her pain. 
She promised that if he fled her now, he soon would follow her ; if he 
did not now accept her presents, he would soon offer presents to her ; 
if he did not love her now, he would soon love her, even were she coy 
and reluctant. Sappho then implores Aphrodite to come to her again 
and assist her. Although, in this ode, Sappho describes her love in 
glowing language, and even speaks of her own frantic heart §, yet 
the indelicacy of such an avowal of passionate love is much diminished 
by the manner in which it is made. The poetess does not impor- 
tune her lover with her complaints, nor address her poem to him, 
but confides her passion to the goddess and pours out to her all the 
tumult and the anguish of her heart. There is great delicacy in her 
not venturing to give utterance in her own person to the expec- 
tation that the coy and indifferent object of her affection would be 
transformed into an impatient lover; an expectation little likely to find 
a place in a heart so stricken and oppressed as that of the poetess ; she 

* In Hephsestion, p. 130. 

f See Ptolem. Hephsestion (in Phot, Bibliothec.) /3//3x/ov £. 

X Fragm. 1. Blomf. 1. Neue. 



1 7 f» HISTORY OF THE 

only recalls to her miiul, that the goddess had in former and similar 
Lions vouchsafed her support and consolation. In other fragments 
bos passionate excitable temper is expressed with frankness quite 
-ii u> our manners, but which possesses a simple grace. Thus 
E jrs, "1 request that the charming Menon be invited, if the 
: is to bring enjoyment to me*;" and she addresses a dis- 
tinguished youth in these words : " Come opposite to me, oh friend, 
and let the sweetness which dwells in thine eyes beam upon me f." 
Vet we can no where find grounds for reproaching her with having 
tried to please men or met their advances when past the season of 
youth. On the contrary, she says, " Thou art my friend, I therefore 
advise thee to seek a younger wife, I cannot bring myself to share thy 
house as an elder J." 

§ S. It is far more difficult to discover and to judge the nature of 
Sappho's intimacies with women. It is, however, certain that the 
life and education of the female sex in Lesbos was not, as in Athens, 
confined within the house; and that girls were not entrusted ex- 
clusively to the care of mothers and nurses. There were • women 
distinguished by their attainments, who assisted in instructing a circle 
of young girls, in the same manner as Socrates afterwards did at Athens 
young men of promising talents. There were also among the Dorians 
of Sparta noble and cultivated women, who assembled young girls about 
them, to whom they devoted themselves with great zeal and affection ; 
and these girls formed associations which, in all probability, were under 
the direction of the elder women §. Such associations as these existed 
in Lesbos in the time of Sappho; but they were completely voluntary, 
and were formed by girls who were studying to attain that proficiency 
in music or other elegant arts, that refinement and grace of manners, 
which distinguished the women around whom they congregated. 
Music and poetry no doubt formed the basis of these societies, and 
instruction and exercise in these arts were their immediate object. 
Though poetry was a part of Sappho's inmost nature, a genuine ex- 
pression of the feelings by which she was really agitated, it is probable 
that with her, as with the ancient poets, it was the business and study 
of life; and as technical perfection in it could be taught, it might, 
by persevering instructions, be imparted to the young ||. Not only 
Sappho, but many other women in Lesbos, devoted themselves to this 
mode of life. In the songs of this poetess, frequent mention was made 

* Fragm. 33. Nene, from Hephaest. p. 41 ; it is not, however, quite certain, that 
the verses belong to Sappho. Compare fragm. 10. Blomf. 5. Neue (sX0e, Kvff-{i).j 

J Fragm. 13. Blomf. 62. Neue. Compare fragment 24. Blomf. 32. Neue. (yXvxua 
y-u-T-B, fjTct — ), and 28. Blomf. 55. Neue, (SQvxi [x\v u <n~ku.vu. — ). 

J Fragm. 12. Blomf. 20. Neue (according to the reading of the latter). 
I filer's Dorians, B. iv. chap. 4. h 8. ch. 5. 6 2. 

.ce Sappho calls her house, " the house of the servant of the Muses," 
nmmj from which mourning must be excluded : Fragm. 71. Blomf. 28. 
Neue. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 177 

of Gorgo and Andromeda as her rivals *. A great number of her you un- 
friends were from distant countries t, as Anactoria of Miletus, Gongvhi 
of Colophon, Eunica of Salamis, Gyrinna, Atthis, Mnasidica. A 
great number of the poems of Sappho related to these female friendships, 
and reveal the familiar intercourse of the woman's chamber, the 
Gynaeconitis ; where the tender refined sensibility of the female mind 
was cultivated and impressed with every attractive form. Among 
these accomplishments, music and a graceful demeanor were the most 
valued. The poetess says to a rich but uncultivated woman, " Where 
thou diest, there wilt thou lie, and no one will remember thy name in 
times to come, because thou hast no share in the roses of Pieria. In- 
glorious wilt thou wander about in the abode of Hades, and flit among 
its dark shades J." She derides one of her rivals, Andromeda, for her 
manner of dressing, from which it is well known the Greeks were wont 
to infer much more of the native disposition and character than we 
do. " What woman," says she to a young female friend, " ever charmed 
thy mind who wore a vulgar and graceless dress, or did not know how 
to draw her garments close around her ankles § ?" She reproaches one 
of her friends, Mnasidica, because, though her form was beautiful as 
that of the young Gyrinna, yet her temper was gloomy ||. To another, 
Atthis, to whom she had shown particular marks of affection, and who 
had grieved her by preferring her rival Andromeda, she says, " Again 
does the strength-dissolving Eros, that bitter-sweet, resistless monster 
agitate me ; but to thee, O Atthis, the thought of me is importunate ; 
thou fliest to Andromeda %." It is obvious that this attachment bears 
less the character of maternal interest than of passionate love ; us 
among the Dorians in Sparta and Crete, analogous connexions between 
men and youths, in which the latter were trained to noble and manly 
deeds, were carried on in a language of high wrought and pas- 
sionate feeling which had all the character of an attachment between 
persons of different sexes. This mixture of feelings, which among 
nations of a calmer temperament have always been perfectly distinct, is 
an essential feature of the Greek character. 

* From the passage on the relations of Sappho in Maxim. Tyrius, Dissert, xxiv. 

f In Suidas in 2«<r^ the ItxT^ui and /u,ecdr,rgiui of Sappho are distinguished: but 
the trai^eci were, at least origin illy, ^«&-/ir^au Thus Maximus Tyrius mentions 
Anactoria as being loved by Sappho; but it is probable that ^Avayo^x MiX*nrix, men- 
tioned by Suidas among her fia^r^xi, is the same person, and that the name ought 
to be written 'Avaxro^'a Mtkynria. This emendation is confirmed by the fact, that 
the ancient name of Miletus was Anactoria; Stephan. Byzant. in voc. M/knrtt, 
Eustath. ad II. II. 8, p. 21, ed. Rom. ; Schol. Apoll. Rhod. I. 187. 

+ Fragm. 11. Blomf. 19. Neue. 

\ Fragm. 35. Blomf. 23. Neue. This passage is illustrated by ancient works of 
sculpture, on which women are represented as walking with the upper garment drawn 
close to the leg above the ankle. See, for example, the relief in Mus. Capitol. T. IV. 
tab. 43. 

|| Fragm. 26, 27. Blomf. 42. Neue. The reading, however, is not quite certain. 

^f Fragm. 31. Blomf. 37. Neue. cf. 32. Blomf. 14. Neue. 'H^av ptv iyu <rtfo V) 
'At^J, vrakcu 7T0TX. 

N 



HISTORY OP THE 

The most remarkable exemple of this impassioned strain of Sappho 
in relation to * female Wend is that considerable fragment preserved by 
LongimiS, which luis often been incorrectly interpreted, because the 
beginning of it led to the erroneous idea that the object of the passion 
expresse d in it was a man. But the poem says, " That man seems to 
me equal to the gods who sits opposite to thee, and watches thy sweet 
speech and charming smile. My heart loses its force : for when I look at 
thee, my tongue ceases to utter ; my voice is broken, a subtle fire glides 
through my veins, my eyes grow dim, and a rushing sound fills my 
ears." In these, and even stronger terms, the poetess expresses nothing 
rribre than a friendly attachment to a young girl, but which, from the 
extreme excitability of feeling, assumes all the tone of the most ardent 
passion *. 

§ 9. From the class of Sapphic odes which we have just described, 
we must distinguish the Epithalamia or Hymeneals, which were pecu- 
liarly adapted to the genius of the poetess from the exquisite perception 
she seems to have had of whatever was attractive in either sex. These 
poems appear, from the numerous fragments which remain, to have had 
great beauty, and much of that mode of expression which the simple, 
natural manners of those times allowed, and the warm and sensitive 
heart of the poetess suggested. The Epithalamium of Catullus, not 
that playful one on the marriage of Manlius Torquatus, but the charm- 
ing, tender poem, " Vesper adest, juvenes, consurgite," is an evident 
imitation of a Sapphic Epithalamium, which was composed in the same 
hexameter verse. It appears that in this, as in Catullus, the trains of 
youths and of maidens advanced to meet; these reproached, those 
praised the evening star, because he led the bride to the youth. Then 
comes the verse of Sappho which has been preserved, " Hesperus, who 
bringest together all that the rosy morning's light has scattered 
abroad f." The beautiful images of the gathered flowers and of the 
vine twining about the elm, by which Catullus alternately dissuades 
and recommends the marriage of the maiden, have quite the character 
of Sapphic similes. These mostly turn upon flowers and plants, which 
the poetess seem to have regarded with fond delight and sympathy J. In 
a fragment lately discovered, which bears a strong impression of the 
simple language of Sappho, she compares the freshness of youth and 
the unsullied beauty of a maiden's face to an apple of some peculiar 
kind, which, when all the rest of the fruit is gathered from the tree, 
remains alone at an unattainable height, and drinks in the whole vigour 
of vegetation ; or rather (to give the simple words of the poetess in 

* Catullus, who imitates this poem in Carm. 51, gives it an ironical termination, 
^Otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est, &c.,) which is certainly not borrowed from 
S.ippho. 

t Fragm. 45. Blomf. G8. Neue. 

t Concerning the love of Sappho for the rose, see Philostrat. Epist. 73, comp. 
Neue fragm. 132. r 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 179 

which the thought is placed before us and gradually heightened with 
great beauty and nature) " like the sweet apple which ripens at the top 
of the bough, on the topmost point of the bough, forgotten by the 
gatherers — no, not quite forgotten, but beyond their reach *." A frag- 
ment written in a similar tone, speaks of a hyacinth, which growing 
among the mountains is trodden underfoot by the shepherds, and its 
purple flower is pressed to the ground f; thus obviously comparing the 
maiden who has no husband to protect her, with the flower which grows 
in the field, as contrasted with that which blooms in the shelter of a 
garden. In another hymeneal, Sappho compares the bridegroom to a 
young and slender sapling J. But she does not dwell upon such 
images as these alone ; she also compares him to Ares §, and his deeds 
to those of Achilles || ; and here her lyre may have assumed a loftier 
tone than that which usually characterised it. But there was another 
kind of hymeneal among the songs of Sappho, which furnished occasion 
to a sort of petulant pleasantry. In this the maidens try to snatch 
away the bride as she is led to the bridegroom, and vent their mockery 
on his friend who stands before the door, and is thence called the 
Porter^". 

Sappho also composed hymns to the gods, in which she invoked them 
to come from their favourite abodes in different countries ; but there is 
little information extant respecting their contents. 

The poems of Sappho are little susceptible of division into distinct 
classes. Hence the ancient critics divided them into books, merely 
according to the metre, the first containing the odes in the Sapphic 
metre, and so on. The hymeneals were thus placed in different books. 
The rhythmical construction of her odes was essentially the same as 
that of Alcseus, yet with many variations, in harmony with the softer 
character of her poetry, and easily perceptible upon a careful compa- 
rison of the several metres. 

How great was Sappho's fame among the Greeks, and how rapidly 
it spread throughout Greece, may be seen in the history of Solon**, who 
was a contemporary of the Lesbian poetess. Hearing his nephew recite 

* Oiov ro ykvxvfiuXov Ig&ufarui uscgco W otr^cfj, 

Ov fihv lx.XiXu.6ovT^ ', aXX.' ovk i^vmvr' \<$iKi<r6a.i. 
The fragment is in Walz, Rhetores Graeci, vol. viii. p. 883. Himerius, Orat. I. 
4. § 16. cites something similar from a hymenseus of Sappho, 
f O'luv rctv vcHxivSov h ov^itrt -roipivt; a.\$gi$ 

•xotrai Kuruffri'ifioutri' y^etfjLOA %i <ri -ro^u^ov il>hf. * 
Demetrius tie elocut. c. 106, quotes these verses without a name; but it ran 
scarcely he doubted that they are Sappho's. In Catullus, the young women use the 
same image as the young men in Sappho. 
+ Fragm. 42. Blomf. 34. Neue. 
§ Fragm. 39. Blomf. 73. Neue. 
|| Himerius, Orat. I. 4. § 16. 

% Fragm. 43. Blomf. 38. Neue. It is worthy of remark, that Demetrius de 
elocut. c. 167, expressly mentions the chorus in relation to this fragment. 
** In Stobaeus, Serin, xxix. 28. 

n2 



] M ) HISTORY OF THE 

one of her poems, he is said to have exclaimed, that he would not wil- 
lingly die till be had learned it by heart. Indeed the whole voice of 
antiquity has declared that the poetry of Sappho was unrivalled in grace 
and sweetness. 

And doubtless from that circle of accomplished women, of whom she 
formed the brilliant centre, a flood of poetic warmth and light was 
poured forth on every side. A friend of hers, Damophila the Pamphy- 
lian, composed a hymn on the worship of the Pergaean Artemis (which 
was solemnized in her native land after the Asiatic fashion) ; in this the 
A : a)]\c style was blended with the peculiarities of the Pamphylian man- 
ner*. Another poetess of far higher renown was Erinna, who died in 
early youth, when chained by her mother to the spinning-wheel ; she 
had as yet known the charm of existence in imagination alone. Her 
poem, called " The Spindle" (TIAa/axr^), containing only 300 hex- 
ameter verses, in which she probably expressed the restless and aspiring 
thoughts which crowded on her youthful mind, as she pursued her 
monotonous work, has been deemed by many of the ancients of such 
high poetic merit as to entitle it to a place beside the epics of 
Homer t- 

§ 11. We now come to Anacreon, whose poetry may be considered 
as akin to that of Alcaeus and Sappho, although he was an Ionian from 
Teos, and his genius had an entirely different tone and bent. In 
respect also of the external circumstances in which he was placed, he 
belonged to a different period ; inasmuch as the splendour and luxury 
of living had, in his time, much increased among the Greeks, and even 
poetry had contributed to adorn the court of a tyrant. The spirit 
of the Ionic race was, in Callinus, united with manly daring and a high 
feeling of honour, and in Mimnermus with a tender melancholy, seeking 
relief from care in sensual enjoyment ; but in Anacreon it is bereft of 
of all these deeper and more serious feelings; and he seems to consider 
life as valuable only in so far as it can be spent in love, music, wine, and 
social enjoyments. And even these feelings are not animated with the 
glow of the /Eolic poets ; Anacreon, with his Ionic disposition, cares 
only for the enjoyment of the passing moment, and no feeling takes 
such deep hold of his heart that it is not always ready to give way to 
fresh impressions. 

Anacreon had already arrived at manhood, when his native city Teos 
was, after some resistance, taken by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus. 
In consequence of this capture, the inhabitants all took ship, and sailed 
lor Thrace, where they founded Abdera, or rather they took possession 
of a Greek colony already existing on the spot, and enlarged the town. 
This event happened about the 60th Olymp. 540 b.c. Anacreon was 
among these Teian exiles; and, according to ancient testimony, he 
* Phibstrat. Vit. Apollon. i. 30, p. 37. ed. Olear. 
f The chief authority is Authol, Palat. ix. 190. 



LITER A TUll E OF ANCIENT CltEi'.CF. 181 

himself called Abdcra, " The fair settlement of the Teians*". About 
this time, or at least not long after, Polycrates became tyrant of Samoa ; 
for Thucydidea places the height of his power under Cambyses, who 
began to reign in Olymp. 62. 4. b. c. 529. Polycrates was, according 
(o the testimony of Herodotus the most enterprising: and magnificent of 
all the Grecian tyrants. His wide dominion over the islands of the 
.flSgaean Sea, and his intercourse with the rulers of foreign countries (as 
with Amasis, king- of Egypt), supplied him with the means of adorning 
his island of Samos, and his immediate retinue, with all that art and 
riches could at that time effect. He embellished Samos with exten- 
sive buildings, kept a court like an oriental prince, and was surrounded 
by beautiful boys for various menial services ; and he appears to have 
considered the productions of such poets as Ibycus, and especially 
Anacreon, as the highest ornament of a life of luxurious enjoyment. 
Anacreon, according to a well known story of Herodotus, was still at the 
court of Polycrates, when death was impending over him ; and he had 
probably just left Samos, when his host and patron was murdered by the 
treacherous and sanguinary Oroetes (Olympiad 64. 3. b. c. 522). At 
this time Hippias, the son of Pisistratus, ruled in Athens; and his 
brother Hipparchus shared the government with him. The latter had 
more taste for poetry than any of his family, and he is particularly 
named in connexion with institutions relating to the cultivation of 
poetry among the Athenians. Hipparchus, according to a Platonic 
dialogue which bears his name, sent out a ship with fifty oars, to bring 
Anacreon to Athens ; and here Anacreon found several other poets, who 
had then come to Athens in order to adorn the festivals of the city, and, 
in particular, of the royal family. Meanwhile Anacreon devoted his 
muse to other distinguished families in Athens ; among others he is 
supposed to have loved the young Critias, the son of Dropides, and to 
have extolled this house distinguished in the annals of Athens t. At 
this time the fame of Anacreon appears to have reached its highest 

* In Strabo xiv. p. 644. A fragment in Schol. Odyss. viii. 293. (fragment 132. 
ed. Bergk,) also refers to the Sintians in Thrace, as likewise does an epigram of 
Anacreon (Anthol. Palat. viii. 226) to a brave warrior, who had fallen in the defence 
of his native city Abdera. 

f Plato, Charmid. p. 157 E. Schol. JSschyl. Prom. 128. This Critias was at that 
time (Olymp. 04) about sixteen years old; for he was born in Olymp. 60 ; and this 
agrees with the fact, that his grandson Critias, the statesman, one of the thirty 
tyrants of Athens, was, according to Plato Tim, p. 21G, eighty years younger than 
his grandfather. Consequently, the birth of the younger Critias falls in Olymp. 
80, which agrees perfectly with the recorded events of his life. The Critias born in 
Olymp. 60, is however called a sen of the Dropides, who is stated to have been a 
friend of Solon, and to have succeeded him in the office of Archon in Olymp. 46. 4. 
B.C. 593. It seems impossible to escape from these chronological difficulties, ex- 
cept by distinguishing this Dropides, and his son Critias, to whom Solon's verses 
refer (Elarifiipm K04W9 tu^otpi^i tkt^o; uxovuv, &c), from the Dropides and Critias 
in Anacreon's time. Upon this supposition the dates of the persons of this family 
would stand thus : Dropides, born about Olymp. 36 ; Critias <rv^o6^t% Olymp.' 44 ; 
Dropides. the grandson, Olymp. 52 ; Critias, the grandson, Olymp. 60 ; Callaeschrus, 
Olymp. 70 ; Critias the tyrant, Oiymp. 80. 



|89 HISTORY OP THE 

point ; he must also have been advanced in years, as his name was, 
among the ancients, always connected with the idea of an old man, 
wh Be grey hairs did not interfere with his gaiety and pursuit of plea- 
sure. It is, indeed, stated, that Anacreon was still alive at the revolt of 
the loniaus, caused by Histiseus, and that being driven from Teos, he 
took refuge in Abdera *. But as this event happened in Olympiad 71. 3. 
b. c. 494, about 35 years after Anacreon's residence with Polycrates, 
the statement must be incorrect; and it appears to have arisen from a 
contusion between the subjugation of the Ionians by Cyrus, and the 
suppression of their revolt under Darius. From an inscription for the 
tomb of Anacreon in Teos, attributed to Simonidest, it is inferred that he 
returned in his old age to Teos, which had been again peopled under 
the Persian government. But the monuments which were erected to 
celebrated men in their own country were often merely cenotaphs; and 
this epitaph may perhaps, like many others bearing the name of Simo- 
nides, have been composed centuries after the time of that poet|. It is 
probable that Anacreon, when he had once become known as the 
welcome guest of the richest and most powerful men of Greece, and 
when his social qualities had acquired general fame, was courted and 
invited by princes in other parts of Greece. It is intimated in an epigram 
that he was intimately connected with the Aleuads, the ruling family in 
Thessaly, who at that time added great zeal for art and literature to the 
hospitable and convivial qualities of their nation. This epigram refers 
to a votive offering of the Thessalian prince Echecratides, doubtless the 
person whose son Orestes, in Olympiad 81. 2. b. c. 454, applied to the 
Athenians to reinstate him in the government which had belonged to his 
father §. 

§ 12. Anacreon seems to have laid the foundation of his poetical 
fame in his native town of Teos; but the most productive period of his 
poetry was during his residence in Samos. The whole of Anacreon's 
poetry (says the geographer Strabo, in speaking of the history of 
Samos) is filled with allusions to Polycrates. His poems, therefore, 
are not to be considered as the careless outpourings of a mind in the 
stillness of retirement, but as the work of a person living in the midst of 
the splendour of the Samian tyrant. Accordingly, his notions of a life of 
enjoyment are not formed on the Greek model, but on the luxurious man- 
ners of the Lydians|j, introduced by Polycrates into his court. The 
beautiful youths, who play a principal part in the genuine poems of 
Anacreon, are not individuals distinguished from the mass of their con- 
temporaries by the poet, but young men chosen for their beauty, whom 

* In Suidas in v. 'Avuxgiuv, Tiu;. 

| Anthol. Pal. vii. 25. fragm. 52. ed. Gaisford. 

♦ The fragment AiWcfij xur^iV ixtyopau (Schol. Hail. Od. M. 313, fragm. 33. 
Bergk.) appears to refer to a journey to this country. 

§ Compare Anthol. Pal. vi. 142, with Thucyd. I. 111. 
|1 h Tui Avowv T^n, 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 183 

Polycrates kept about his person, and of whom some had been procured 
from a distance; as, for example, Smerdies, from the country of the 
Thracian Ciconians. Some of these youths enlivened the meals of Po- 
lycrates by music ; as Bathyllus, whose flute-playing and Ionic singing 
are extolled by a later rhetorician, and of whom a bronze statue was 
shown in the Temple of Juno at Samos, in the dress and attitude of a 
player on the cithara ; but Avhich, according to the description of Apu- 
leius, appears to have been only an Apollo Citharcedus, in the ancient 
style. Other youths were perhaps more distinguished as dancers. 
Anacreon offers his homage to alHhese youths, and divides his affection 
and admiration between Smerdies with the flowing locks, Cleobulus 
with the beautiful eyes, the bright and playful Lycaspis, the charming 
Megistes, Bathyllus, Simalus, and doubtless many others whose names 
have not been preserved. He wishes them to sport with him in drunken 
merriment * ; and if the youth will take no part in his joy, he threatens 
to fly upon light wings up to Olympus, there to make his complaints, 
and to induce Eros to chastise him for his scorn f. Or he implores Diony- 
sus, the god with whom Eros, and the dark-eyed nymphs, and the purple 
Aphrodite, play, — to turn Cleobulus, by the aid of wine, to the love of 
Anacreon J. Or he laments, in verses full of careless grace, that the 
fair Bathyllus favours him so little §. He knows that his head and temples 
are grey ; but he hopes to obtain the affection of the youths by his 
pleasing song and speech ||. In short, he pays his homage to these 
youths, in language combining passion and playfulness. 

§ 13. Anacreon, however, did not on this account withhold his admi- 
ration from female beauty. " Again (he says, in an extant fragment) 
golden-haired Eros strikes me with a purple ball, and challenges me to 
sport and play with a maiden with many-coloured sandals. But she, a 
native of the well-built Lesbos %, despises my grey hairs, and prefers an- 
other man." His amatory poetry chiefly consists of complaints of the 
indifference of women to his love; which, however, are expressed in so 
light and playful a manner, that they do not seem to proceed from ge- 
nuine regret. Thus, in the beautiful ode, imitated in many places by 
Horace ** : " Thracian filly, why do you look at me askance, and avoid 
me without pity, and will not allow me any skill in my art? Know, then, 
that I could soon find means of curbing your spirit, and, holding the 

* Anacreon has a peculiar term to express this idea, viz. h(o»v or truvyifioiv. One of 
the amusements of this kind of life is gambling, of which the fragment in Schol. 
Horn. II. xxiii. S8, fragment 44. Bergk. speaks : " Dice are the vehement passion 
and the conflict of Eros." 

t Fragm. in Hephsest. p. 52. (22. Bergk.), explained hy Julian Epist. 18, 
p. 386. B. 

+ Fragm. in Dio Chrysost. Or. II. p. 31, fr. 2. Bergk. 

§ Horat. Ep. xiv. 9. sq. 

|| Fragm. in Maxim. Tyr. viii. p. 9G, fr. 42. Bergk. 

% In Athen. xiii. p. 599. C. fr. 15. Bergk. That it does not refer to Sappho is 
proved by the dates of her lifetime, and of that of Anacreon. 

** In Heraclid, Allegor, Horn. p. 10, ed, Schow. fr, 79, Bergk. 



]^j HISTORY OF TUB 

reins, could gttide you in the course round the goal Still you wander 
about the pastures, and bound lightly round them, for there has been 
DO dexterous hand to tame you." 13ut such loves as these are far dif- 
ferent from the deep seriousness with which Sappho confesses her pas- 
sion, and they can only be judged by those relations between the sexes 
which were universally established among- the Ionians at that time, i 
the Ionic states of Asia Minor, as at Athens, a freeborn maiden was 
brought up within the strict limits of the family circle, and was never 
allowed to enter the society of men. Thence it happened that a separate 
class of women devoted themselves to all those arts which qualified 
them to enhance the charm of social life — the Hetaerije, most of them 
foreigners or freed women, without the civic rights which belonged to 
the daughter of a citizen, but often highly distinguished by the elegance 
of their demeanor and by their accomplishments. Whenever, there- 
fore, women are mentioned by Ionic and Attic writers, as taking part 
in the feasts and symposia of the men, and as receiving at their dwell- 
ing the salutations of the joyous band of revellers, — the Comus, — 
there can be no doubt that they were Hetserae. Even at the time of the 
orators *, an Athenian woman of genuine free blood would have lost 
the privileges of her birth, if she had so demeaned herself. Hence it 
follows, that the women with whom Anacreon offers to dance and sing, 
and to whom, after a plenteous repast, he addresses a song on the 
Fectis -f, are Hetaera?, like all those beauties whose charms are cele- 
brated by Horace. Anacreon's most serious love appears to have been 
for the " fair Eurypyle ;" since jealousy of her moved him to write a 
satirical poem, in which Artemon, the favourite of Eurypyle, who was 
then passing an effeminate and luxurious life, is described in the mean 
and necessitous condition in which he had formerly lived i. Anacreon 
here shows a strength and bitterness of satirical expression resembling 
the tone of Archilochus; a style which he has successfully imitated in 
other poems. But Anacreon is content with describing the mere sur- 
face, that is, the outward marks of disgrace, the slavish attire, the low- 
bred demeanor, the degrading treatment to which Artemon had been 
exposed ; without (as it appears) touching upon the intrinsic merit or 
demerit of the person attacked. Thus, if we compare Anacreon with 
the .Eolic lyric poets, he appears less reflective, and more occupied with 
external objects. For instance, wine, the effects of which are described 
by Alcneus with much depth of feeling, is only extolled by Anacreon as 
a means of social hilarity. Yet he recommends moderation in the use 
of it, and disapproves of the excessive carousings of the Scythians, 
which led to riot and brawling §. The ancients, indeed (probably with 
* Demosth. Nean-. p. 1352, Reiske, and elsewhere ; Isseus de Pynhi Hered.p. 30. 

f In Heph.x-st. p. 59. fr. 16. Bergk. 

I In Athen. xii. p. 533. E. fr. 19. Bergk. 

V In Athen. x. p. 427. A. IV. 62. Bergk. Similarly Horace I. 27. 1. sq. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GnEECE. 185 

justice), considered the drunkenness of Anacreon as rather poetical 
than real. In Anacreon we see plainly how the spirit of the Ionic race, 
notwithstanding the elegance and refinement of Ionian manners, had 
lost its energy, its warmth of moral feeling, and its power of serious re- 
flexion, and was reduced to a light play of pleasing thoughts and senti- 
ments. So far as we are able to judge of the poetry of Anacreon, it 
seems to have had the same character as that attributed by Aristotle to 
the later Ionic school of painting of Zeuxis, that "it had elegance of 
design and brilliancy of colouring, but was wanting in moral character 
(to |0o S .)" 

$ 14. The Ionic softness, and departure from strict rule, which cha- 
racterizes the poetry of Anacreon, may also be perceived in his versifi- 
cation. His language approached much nearer to the style of common 
conversation than that of the iEolic lyric poets, so as frequently to seem 
like prose embellished with ornamental epithets ; and his rhythm is also 
softer and less bounding than that of the iEolians, and has an easy and 
graceful negligence, which Horace has endeavoured to imitate. Some- 
times he makes use of logaoedic metres, as in the Glyconean verses, which 
he combines into strophes, by subjoining a Pherecratean verse to a 
number of Glyconeans. In this metre he shows his love for variety and 
novelty, by mixing strophes of different lengths with several Glyconean 
verses, yet so as to preserve a certain symmetry in the whole *. Anacreon 
also, like the JEolic lyric poets, sometimes used long choriamDic verses, 
particularly when he intended to express energy of feeling, as in the 
poem against Artemon, already mentioned. This metre also exhibits a 
peculiarity in the rhythm of the Ionic poets, viz., an alternation of dif- 
ferent metres, producing a freer and more varied, but also a more care- 
less, flow of the rhythm. In the present poem this peculiarity consists 
in the alternation of choriambics with iambic dipodies r f\ The same cha 
racter is still more strongly shown in the Ionic metre (Ionici a minori) 
which was much used by Anacreon. At the same time he changed its 
expression (probably after the example of the musician Olympus) J, by 

* So in the long fragment in Schol. Hephaest. p. 125. fr. 1. Bergk. 

yovvovftxt <f iXutynft'oXt 
\a.y6n Tcc.7 A/oj, uygtuv 

This is followed by a second strophe, with four glyconeans and a pherecratean ; 
and both strophes together form a larger whole. This hymn of Anacreon, the only- 
composition of its kind Avhich is known, is evidently intended for the inhabitants of 
Magnesia, on the Maeander and Lethaeus, rebuilt after its destruction (ch. 9. § 4.), 
where Artemis was worshipped under the title of Leucophryne. 

f So that the metre is 

S o o _ | _^ o o _ I _/ O O -. I o _/ CJ _ 

i t ^- a - 1 

ToXXcc f/.iv iv 5oi/£/ <rifei; at^sva, tfoXXu. V iv Tgo%w, 
ToXXa. %\ vurov ffxur'ivn [tciirriyt 0cof&i%fa);, xoftnv — % 
Two such verses as these are then followed by an iambic dimeter, as an epode ; 

Tuyuva. r IxTtriXfAivo;. 

I Seech. 12. 6 7. 



1^,, HISTORY OP THE 

coinlniiinn- two Ionic foci, so that the last long' syllable of the first foot was 
shortened and the first short syllable of the second foot was lengthened ; 
1» which change the second foot became a trochaic dipody *. By this 
process, called by the ancients abending, or refraction (ava.K\aaig)> the 
metre obtained a less uniform, and at the same time a softer, expression ; 
and thus, when distributed into short verses, it became peculiarly suited 
to erotic poetry. The only traces of this metre, before Anacreon's time, 
occur in two fragments of Sappho. Anacreon, however, formed upon 
this plan a great variety of metres, particularly the short Anacreontic 
verse (a dimeter Ionicus), which occurs so frequently, both in his 
genuine fragments and in the later odes imitated from his style. Ana- 
creon used the trochaic and iambic verses in the same manner as Archi- 
lochus, with whom he has as much in common, in the technical part of 
his poetry, as with the iEolic lyric poets. The composition of verses in 
strophes is less frequent with Anacreon than with the Lesbian poets ; 
and when he forms strophes, it often happens that their conclusion is 
not marked by a verse different from those that precede ; but the divi- 
sion is only made by the juxtaposition of a definite number of short 
verses (for example, four Ionic dimeters), relating to a common 
subject. 

§ 15. It is scarcely possible to treat of the genuine remains of the 
poetry of Anacreon, without adverting to the collection of odes, preserved 
under his name. Indeed, these graceful little poems have so much 
influenced the notion formed of Anacreon, that even now the admiration 
bestowed upon him is almost entirely founded upon these productions 
of poets much later than him in date, and-very different from him in 
poetical character. It has long since been proved that these Anacre- 
ontics are not the work of Anacreon ; and no further evidence of their 
spuriousness is needed than the fact, that out of about 150 citations of 
passages and expressions of Anacreon, which occur in the ancient 
writers, only one (and that of recent date) refers to a poem in this 
collection. But their subject and form furnish even stronger evi- 
dence. The peculiar circumstances under which Anacreon wrote his 
poetry never appear in these odes. The persons named in them (as, 
for example, Bathyllus) lose their individual reality; the truth and 
vigour of life give place to a shadowy and ideal existence. Many of the 
common places of poetry, as an old age of pleasure, the praise of 
love and wine, the power and subtlety of love, &c, are unquestion- 
ably treated in them with an easy grace and a charming simplicity. 
But generalities of this kind, without any reference to particular events 
or persons, do not consist with the character of Anacreon's poetry, which 
was drawn fresh from the life. Moreover, the principal topics in these 
poems have an epigrammatic and antithetical turn : the strength of the 
weaker sex, the power of little Eros, the happiness of dreams, the 

* So that yy^- j g y S. - is changed into ow^o | ./ o „ _. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 187 

freshness of age, are subjects for epigrams ; and for epigrams like those 
composed in the first century before Christ (especially by Meleager), and 
not like those of Simonides. Throughout these odes love is represented 
as a little boy, who carries on a sort of mischievous sport with mankind ; 
a conception unknown to ancient art, and closely akin to the epigram- 
matic sports which belonged to the literature of a later period, and to the 
analogous representations of Cupid in works of art, especially on gems, 
where he appears, in various compositions, as a froward mischievous 
child. None of these works are more ancient than the time of Lysippus 
or Alexander. The Eros of the genuine Anacreon, who " strikes at 
the poet with a great hatchet, like a smith, and then bathes in the 
wintry torrent*," is evidently a being different both in body and mind. 
The language of these odes is also prosaic and mean, and the versifica- 
tion monotonous, inartificial, and sometimes faulty f. 

These objections apply to the entire collection ; nevertheless, there is 
a great difference between the several odes, some of which are excellent 
in their way, and highly pleasing from their simplicity J; while others 
are feeble in their conception and barbarous in their language and 
versification. The former may, perhaps, belong to the Alexandrian 
period; in which (notwithstanding its refined civilization) some poets 
attempted to express the simplicity of childish dispositions, as appears 
from the Idylls of Theocritus. Those of inferior stamp may be ascribed 
to the later period of declining paganism, and to uncultivated writers, 
who imitated a hackneyed style of poetical composition. However, many 
even of the better Anacreontics may have been written at as late a period 
as that of the national migrations. There can be no doubt that the 
century which produced the epic poetry of Nonnus, and so many inge- 
nious and well-expressed epigrams, possessed sufficient talent and know- 
ledge for Anacreontics of this kind. 

§ 16. With Anacreon ceased the species of lyric poetry, in which he 
excelled : indeed he stands alone in it, and the tender softness of his 
song was drowned by the louder tones of the choral poetry. The poem 
(or melos) destined to be sung by a single person, never, among the 
Greeks, acquired so much extent as it has since attained in the modern 
English and German poetry. By modern poets it has been used as 
the vehicle for expressing almost every variety of thought and feeling. 
The ancients, however, drew a more precise distinction between the 

* Fragm. in Hephaest. p. 68. Gais. fr. 45. Bergk. 

t The prevailing metre in these Anacreontics o_o_o_o (a dimeter 
iambic catulectic) does not occur in the fragments, except in Hephaest. p. 30, Schol. 
Aristoph. Plut. 302. (fr. 92. Bergk.) The verses there quoted are imitated in 
one of the Anacreontics, od. 38. Hephaestion calls this metre, the " so called 
'Avaxoiovruov." 

I One of the best, viz. Anacreon's advice to the toreutes, who is to make bim a 
cup, (No. 17 in the collection,) is cited by Gellius N. A. xix. 9, as a work of Ana- 
creon himself ; but it has completely the tone and character of the common Ana- 
creontics, 



1-s HISTORY OF THE 

different feelings to be expressed in different forms of poetry; and re- 
served the /Eolic melos for lively emotions of the mind in joy or sorrow, 
or for impassioned overflowings of an oppressed heart. Anacreon's 
poetry contains rather the play of a graceful imagination than deep 
emotion ; and among the other Greeks there is no instance of the em- 
ployment of lyric poetry for the expression of strong feeling: so that 
this kind of poetry was confined to a short period of time, and to a small 
portion of the Greek territory. One kind of lyric poems nearly re- 
sembling the .Eolic, was, however, cultivated in the whole of Greece, 
and especially at Athens, viz., the Scolion. 

Scolia were songs, which were sung at social meals during drinking, 
when the spirit was raised by wine and conversation to a lyrical pitch. 
But this term was not applied to all drinking songs. The scolion 
was a particular kind of drinking song, and is distinguished from 
other paroonia. It was only sung by particular guests, who were 
skilled in music and poetry ; and it is stated that the lyre, or a sprig 
of myrtle, was handed round the table, and presented to any one who 
possessed the power of amusing the company with a beautiful song, or 
even a good sentence in the lyric form. This custom really existed *; 
although the notion that the name of the song arose from its irregular 
course round the table (oxoXioV, crooked) is not probable. It is 
much more likely (according to the opinion of other ancient writers), 
that in the melody, to which the scolia were sung,' certain liberties 
and irregularities were permitted, by which the extempore execution 
of the song was facilitated ; and that on this account the song was 
said to be bent. The rhythms of the extant scolia are very various, 
though, on the whole, they resemble those of the iEolic lyric poetry ; 
only that the course of the strophes is broken by an accelerated 
rhythm, and is in general more animated t. The Lesbians were 
the principal composers of Scolia. Terpander, who (according to 
Pindar) invented this kind of song, was followed by Alcseus and 
Sappho, and afterwards by Anacreon and Praxilla of S icy on J ; besides 
many others celebrated for choral poetry, as Simonides and Pindar. 

* See particularly the scene described in Aristoph. Vesp. 1219. sq. where the 
Scolion is caught up from one by the other. 

f This is particularly true of the apt and elegant metre, which occurs in eight 
Scolia (one of them the Harmodius), and of which there i« a comic imitation in 
Aristoph. EccL 938. 

_o_^oo — o_o_o 
o o _£ o _ I _/ o o _ 
_/ o o _ o _ J _£oo_o_ 
Here the hendecasyllables begin with a composed and feeble tone ; but a more 
rapid rhythm is introduced by the anapaestic beginning of the third verse; and the 
two expressions are reconciled by the logacedic members in the last verse. 

I Praxilla (who, according to Eusebius, flourished in Olymp. 81. 2, b. c. 451 ; 
and is mentioned as a composer of odes of an erotic character) is stated to be the 
author of the Scolion 'r-z-o veivr) XjI?, which was in the TK^oivia n^a|/XX>?;. (Schol. 
Kav. in Aristoph. Thesm. 528), and of the Scolion, OIk t<rnv kXutix'Zuv, (Schol. 
y«l>. 1279. [1232.]) 



LITERATURE OF ANCI&NT GREECE. 180 

We will not include in this number the seven wise men ; for although 
Diogenes Laertius, the historian of ancient philosophy, cites popular 
verses of Thales, Solon, Chilon, Pittocus, and Bias, which are some- 
what in the style of scolia * ; yet the genuineness of these sententious 
songs is very questionable. With respect to language and metre, they 
all appear formed upon the same model ; so that we must suppose the 
seven wise men to have agreed to write in an uniform style, and more- 
over in a kind of rhythm which did not. become common until the time 
of the tragedians f. Nevertheless they appear, in -substance, to be as 
early as the age to which they are assigned, as their tone has a great 
resemblance to that of the scolia in the iEolic manner. For example, 
one of the latter contains these thoughts : " Would that we could open 
the heart of every man, and ascertain his true character; then close it 
again, and live with him sincerely as a friend ; " the scolion, in Doric 
rhythms, ascribed to Chilon, has a similar tone : *' Gold is rubbed on the 
touchstone, and thus tried; but the minds of men are tried by gold, 
whether they are good or bad." Hence it is probable that these scolia 
were framed at Athens, in the time of the tragedians, from traditional 
sayings of the ancient philosophers. 

§ 17. Although scolia were mostly composed of moral maxims or of 
short invocations to the gods, or panegyrics upon heroes, there exist 
two, of greater length and interest, the authors of which are not other- 
wise known as poets. The one beginning, " My great wealth is my 
spear and sword," and written by Hybrias, a Cretan, in the Doric 
measure, expresses till the pride of the dominant Dorian, whose right 
rested upon his arms ; inasmuch as through them he maintained his 
sway over bondmen, who were forced to plough and gather in the 
harvest, and press out the grapes for him J. The other beginning, " In 
the myrtle-bough will I bear my sword," is the work of an Athenian, 
named Cailistratus, and was written probably not long after the Persian 
war, as it was a favourite song in the time of Aristophanes. 1 1 celebrates 

* Diogenes generally introduces them with some such expression as this : ruv V 
aSoftivuv auTov pukurret, tv^oxi^trtv lx.s7vo. 

\ They are all in Doric rhythms (which consist of dactylic members and trochaic 
dipodies), but with an ithyphallic (— o _ o _ o) at the close. This composite kind 
of rhythm never occurs in Pindar, occurs only once in Simonides, but occurs regu- 
larly in the Doric choruses of Euripides. The following scolion of Solon may serve 
as an example : 

ni"£v\ctyftivo; riiihoa. 'ixuffTOV o(>u, 

M*j kouttov 'iyx°i *X UV ft^a^iy Qufyu vrpoo-tvvia"/i yrgo<ru<r*y, 

TXutrffoc Vi ol o'tftOfJuSa; Ik (JLiXcc'i- 

vet; <p^svo; yiyuvy,. 

Also the following one of Pittacus : 

"Evavra o*ii <r'o\a. xu) loooxov tpuoirgtiv ffrii^itv Ton §uru. xukov. 

Tlitrrov ykp ouTiv ykcuffo-a, %tu, crrofia,ros kaXii, ^t^of^uSov i^ouffa 

Kafirs, voyificc. 
In that of Thales (Diog. Laert. I. i. 35,) the ithyphallic is before the last verse. 
J See Mailer's Dorians, B. III. ch. 4. § 1, 



190 HISTORY OP THE 

the liberators of the Athenian people, Harmodius and Aristogiton, for 
haying, at the festival of Athene, slain the tyrant Hipparchus, and re- 
stored equal rights to the Athenians ; for this they lived for ever in the 
islands of the blest, in community with the most exalted heroes, and on 
earth their fame was immortal*. This patriotic scolion does not indeed 
rest on an historical foundation ; for it is known from Herodotus and 
Thttcydides, that, though Hipparchus, the younger brother of the tyrant, 
was slain by Harmodius and Aristogiton, this act only served to make 
the government of Hippias, the elder brother, more cruel and suspicious; 
and it was Cleomenes the Spartan, who, three years later, really drove 
the Pisistratids from Athens. But the patriotic delusion in which the 
scolion was composed was universal at Athens. Even before the 
Persian war, statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton had been erected, 
as of heroes ; which statues, when carried away by Xerxes, were after- 
wards replaced by others. Supposing the mind of the Athenian poet 
possessed with this belief, w r e cannot but sympathize in the enthusiasm 
with which he celebrates his national heroes, and desires to imitate 
their costume at the Panathenaic festival, when they concealed their 
swords in boughs of myrtle. The simplicity of the thoughts, and the 
frequent repetition of the same burden, " for they slew the tyrant," is 
quite in conformity with the frank and open tone of the scolion ; and we 
may perhaps conjecture that this poem was a real impromptu, the pro- 
duct of a rapid and transient inspiration of its author. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

§ 1. Connection of lyric poetry with choral songs : gradual rise of regular forms 
from this connection. First stage. — § 2. Alcman ; his origin and date ; mode of 
recitation and form of his choral songs. — § 3. Their poetical character.— § 4. 
Stesichorus ; hereditary transmission of his poetical taste ; his reformation of 
the chorus. — § 5. Subjects and character of his poetry. — § 6. Erotic and bucolic 
poetry of Stesichorus. — § 7. Arion. The dithyramb raised to a regular choral 
song. Second stage. — 6 8. Life of Ibycus ; his imitation of Stesichorus. — § 9. 
Erotic tendency of his poetry.— 6 10. Life of Simonides. — § 11. Variety and 
ingenuity of his poetical powers. Comparison of his Epinikia with those of 
Pindar. — 6 12. Characteristics of his style.— § 13. Lyric poetry of Bacchylides, 
imitated from that of Simonides.— § 14. Parties among the lyric poets; rivalry, 
of Lasus, Timocreon, and Pindar with Simonides. 

§ 1. The characteristic features of the Doric lyric poetry have been 
already described, for the purpose of distinguishing it from the ^Eolic. 
These were; recitation by choruses, the artificial structure of long 
strophes, the Doric dialect, and its reference to public affairs, especially 

* These, and most of the other scolia, are in Athenaeus, xv. p. 694, sq. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 191 

to the celebration of divine worship. The origin of this kind of lyric 
poetry can be traced to the earliest times of Greece : for (as has been 
already shown) choruses were generally used in Greece before the time 
of Homer ; although the dancers in the ancient choruses did not also 
sing, and therefore an exact correspondence of all their motions with the 
words of the song was not requisite. At that period, however, the joint 
singing of several persons was practised, who either sat, stood or 
moved onwards; aS in paeans and hymenseals; sometimes the mimic 
movements of the dancer were explained by the singing, which was 
executed by other persons, as in the hyporchemes. And thus nearly 
every variety of the choral poetry, which was afterwards so elaborately 
and so brilliantly developed, existed, even at that remote period, though 
in a rude and unfinished state. The production of those polished forms 
in which the style of singing and the movements of the dance were 
brought into perfect harmony, coincides with the last advance in musical 
art ; the improvements in which, made by Terpander, Olympus, and 
Thaletas, have formed the subject of a particular notice. 

Thaletas is remarkable for having cultivated the art of dancing as 
much as that of music ; while his rhythms seem to have been nearly as 
various as those afterwards employed in choral poetry. The union of song 
and dance, which was transferred from the lyric to the dramatic choruses *, 
must also have been introduced at that time ; since the complicated 
structure of the strophes and antistrophes is founded, not on singing 
alone, but on the union of that art with dancing. In the first century 
subsequent to the epoch of these musicians, choral poetry does not, 
however, appear in its full perfection and individuality ; but approaches 
either to the Lesbian lyric poetry, or to the epos ; thus the line which 
separated these two kinds (between which the choral songs occupy a 
middle place) gradually became more distinct. Among the lyric poets 
whom the Alexandrians placed in their canon, Alcmanand Stesichorus 
belong to this period of progress ; while finished lyric poetry is repre- 
sented by Ibycus, Simonides with his disciple Bacchylides, and Pindar. 
We shall now proceed to take a view of these poets separately ; class- 
ing among the former the dithyrambic poet Arion, and among the latter 
Pindar's instructor Lasus, and a few others who have sufficient indivi- 
duality of character to distinguish them from the crowd. 

We must first, however, notice the erroneous opinion that choral 
poetry existed among the Greeks in the works of these great poets 
only ; they are, on the contrary, to be regarded merely as the eminent 
points arising out of a widely extended mass; as the most perfect re- 
presentatives of that poetical fervour which, at the religious festivals, 
inspired all classes. Choral dances were so frequent among the Greeks 

* Ucikcci fAv ya^ el alro) xu) ffiov xu) u^oZvto, says Lucian de Saltat. 30, comparing 
the modern pantomimic style of dancing with the ancient lyric and dramatic style. 



].) ) HISTORY OP THE 

at this period, among the Dorians in particular, and were performed by 
the whole people, especially in Crete and Sparta, with such ardour and 
enthusiasm, that the demand for songs to be sung as an aceompani- 
ment to them must have been very great. Jt is true that, in many 
places, even at the great festivals, people contented themselves with the 
old traditionary songs, consisting of a few simple verses in which the 
principal thoughts and fundamental tone of feeling were rather touched 
than worked out. Thus, at the festival of Dionysus, the women of 
Elis sang, instead of an elaborate dithyramb, the simple ditty, full 
of antique symbolic language : " Come, hero Dionysus, to thy holy sea- 
temple, accompanied by the Graces, and rushing on, oxen-hoofed ; holy 
ox! holy ox*!" 

At Olympia too, long before the existence of Pindar's skilfully com- 
posed Epinikia, the little song ascribed to Archilochus t was sung in 
honour of the victors at the games. This consisted of two iambic verses ; 
" Hail, Hercules, victorious prince, all hail ! 
Thyself and Iolaus, warriors bold," 
with the burden '• Tenella ! victorious !" to which a third verse, in 
praise of the victor of the moment, was probably added extempore. So 
also the three Spartan choruses, composed of old men, adults and boys, 
sang at the festivals the three iambic trimeters: 

■• Once we were young, and strong as other youths. 
We are so still ; if you list, try our strength. 
We shall be stronger far than all of you J." 
But from the time that the Greeks had learned the charm of peifect 
lyric poetry, in which not merely a single chord of feeling was struck by 
the passing hand of the bard, but an entire melody of thoughts and 
sentiments was executed, their choruses did not persist in the mere 
repetition of verses like these ; songs were universally demanded, dis- 
tinguished for a more artificial metre, and for an ingenious combina- 
tion of ideas. Hence every considerable town, particularly in the 
Doric^ Peloponnesus, had its poet who devoted his whole life to the 
training and execution of choruses — in short to the business, so im- 
portant to the whole history of Greek poetry, of the Chorodidascalus. 
How many such choral poets there were, whose fame did,,' not extend 
beyond their native place, may be gathered from the fact that Pindar, 
while celebrating a pugilist of iEgina, incidentally mentions two lyric 
poets of the same family, the Theandrids, Timocritus and Euphanes. 
Sparta also possessed seven lyric poets besides Alcman, in these early 
times §. There too, as in other Doric states, women, even in the time 

* Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. 36. + See above, p. 138. note f. 

+ Plutarch, Lycurg; 21. These triple choruses are called vyxhat* in Pollux IV. 
107, where the establishment of them is attributed to Tyrtaeus. 

6 Their names are Spendon, Dionysodotus, Xenodamus, (see Chap. xii. §11.) 
Gittadai, Areius, Eurytus, and Zarex. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 193 

of Alcinan, contributed to the cultivation of poetry; as, for example, 
the maiden whom Alcman himself celebrates in these words *, *' This 
gift of the sweet Muses hath the fair-haired Megalostrata, favoured 
among virgins, displayed among us." From this we see how widely 
diffused, and how deeply rooted, were the feeling and the talent for such 
poetical productions in Sparta; and that Alcman, with his beautiful 
choral songs, introduced nothing new into that country, and only em- 
ployed, combined and perfected elements already existing. But neither 
Alcman, nor the somewhat earlier Terpander, were the first who 
awakened this spirit among the Spartans. Even the latter found the 
love for arts of this description already in existence, where, according 
to an extant verse of his, " The spear of the young men, and the 
clear-sounding muse, and justice in the wide market-place, flourish." 

§ 2. According to a well known and sufficiently accredited account, 
Alcman was a Lydian of Sardis, who grew up as a slave in the house 
of Agesidas, a Spartan ; but was emancipated, and obtained rights 
of citizenship, though of a subordinate kind -j-. A learned poet of 
the Alexandrian age, Alexander the ^Etolian, says of Alcman, (or 
rather makes him say of himself,) " Sardis, ancient home of my 
fathers, had I been reared within thy walls, I were now a cymbal- 
bearer j, or a eunuch-dancer in the service of the Great Mother, decked 
with gold, and whirling the beautiful tambourine in my hands. But 
now I am called Alcman, and belong to Sparta, the city rich in sacred 
tripods ; and J have become acquainted with the Heliconian Muses, 
who have made me greater than the despots Daskyles and^Gyges." 
Alcman however, in his own poems, does not speak so contemptuously 
of the home of his forefathers, but puts into the mouth of a chorus of 
virgins, words wherein he himself is celebrated as being " no man of 
rude unpolished manners, no Thessalian or iEtolian, but sprung from 
the lofty Sardis §." This Lydian extraction had doubtless an influence 
on Alcman's style and taste in music. The date at which he lived is 
usually placed at so remote a period as to render it unintelligible how 
lyric poetry could have already attained to such variety as is to be 
found in his works. It may indeed be true that he lived in the reign 
of the Lydian king Ardys ; but it does not thence follow that he lived 
at the beginning of it ; on the contrary, his childhood was contemporary 
with the close of that reign. (Ol. 37. 4. b. c. 629.) Alcman, in one 
of his poems, mentioned the musician Polymnastus, who, in his turn, 

* Fragm. 27. ed.Welcker. 

t According to Suidas he was kto Murox;, and Mesoa was one of the phylse of 
Sparta, which were founded on divisions of the city. Perhaps, however, this state- 
ment only means that Alcman dwelt in Mesoa, where the family of his former 
master and subsequent patron may have resided. 

I Ki^vus is equivalent to x,i^o<p'o^at, the bearer of the dish, xiovo;, used in the wor- 
ship of Cybele. See the epigram in Anthol. Pal. VII. 709. 

§ Fragm. 11. ed. Welcker, according to Welcker's explanation. 

o 



\()4 HISTORY OF THE 

composed a poem to Thaletas *. According to this, he must have 
flourished about OI. 42. (b. c. 612), which is the date assigned to him 
by ancient chronologists. His mention of the island Pityusae f near the 
Balearic islands, points to this age; since, according to Herodotus, 
the western parts of the Mediterranean were first known to the Greeks 
by the voyages of the Phocaeans, from the 35th Olympiad downwards ; 
and then became a subject of geographical knowledge, not, as hereto- 
fore, of fabulous legends. Alcman had thus before him music in that 
maturity which it had attained, not only by the labours of Terpander, 
but also by those of Thaletas ; he lived at a time when the Spartans, 
after the termination of the Messenian wars, had full leisure to devote 
themselves to the arts and pleasures of life ; for their ambition was not 
as yet directed to distinguishing themselves from the other Greeks 
by rude unpolished manners. Alcman devoted himself entirely to the 
cultivation of art ; and we find in him one of the earliest examples of a 
poet who consciously and purposely strove to embellish his works with 
new artistical forms. In the ode which is regarded by the ancients as 
the first, he says, u Come, Muse, clear-voiced Muse, sing to the maidens 
a melodious song in a new fashion J ;" and he elsewhere frequently 
mentions the originality and the ingenuity of his poetical forms. He 
ought always to be imagined as at the head of a chorus, by means of 
which, and together with which, he seeks to please. 

" Arise, Muse," exclaims he, " Calliope, daughter of Jove, sing us 
pleasant songs, give charm to the hymn, and grace to the chorus §." 
And again, " May my chorus please the house of Zeus, and thee, 
oh lord || !" Alcman is regarded by some as the true inventor of 
choral poetry, although others assign this reputation to his predecessor 
Terpander, or to his successor Stesichorus. He composed more espe- 
cially for choruses of virgins, as several of the fragments quoted above 
show ; as well as the title of a considerable portion of his songs, Par- 
then ia. The word Parthenia is, indeed, not always employed in the 
same sense ; but in its proper technical signification it denotes choral 
songs sung by virgins, not erotic poems addressed to them. On the 
contrary, the music and the rhythm of these songs are of a solemn and 
lofty character; many of those of Alcman and the succeeding lyric 
poets were in the Doric harmony. The subjects were very various : 
according to Proclus, gods and men were celebrated in them, and the 
passage of Alcman, in which the virgins, with Homeric simplicity, ex- 

* S»:e Ch. xii. § 9. f Steph. Byz. in TJ^uovo-ai. 

I This is the meaning of fragm. 1., which probably ought to be written and dis- 
tributed (with a slight alteration) as follows : 

M<W5-' ecys, Meocru, XiyuTcc, -ToXvpiXh ptXos 

The first verse is logaoedic, the second iambic. 

§ Fragm. 4. || Fragm.68. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 195 

claim, " Oh father Zeus, were he but my husband* !" was doubtless in 
a Parthenion. If we inquire more minutely into the relation of the 
poet to his chorus, we shall not find, at least not invariably, that it as 
yet possessed that character to which Pindar strictly adhered. The 
chorus was not the mere organ of the poet, and all the thoughts and 
feelings to which it gave utterance, those of the poetf. In Alcman, 
the virgins more frequently speak in their own persons ; and many 
Parthenia contain a dialogue between the chorus and the poet, who 
was at the same time the instructor and the leader of the chorus. We 
find sometimes addresses of the chorus of virgins to the poet, such as 
has just been mentioned ; sometimes of the poet to the virgins asso- 
ciated with him ; as in that beautiful fragment in hexameters, " No 
more, ye honeyvoiced, holy-singing virgins, no more do my limbs 
suffice to bear me ; oh that I were a Cerylus, which with the halcyons 
skims the foam of the waves with fearless heart, the sea-blue bird of 
spring | !" 

But, doubtless, Alcman composed and directed other choruses, 
since the Parthenia were only a part of his poetical works, besides 
which Hymns to the Gods, Paeans, Prosodia§, Hymeneals, and love- 
songs, are attributed to him. These poems were generally recited or 
represented by choruses of youths. The love-songs were probably 
sung by a single performer to the cithara. The clepsiambic poems, 
consisting partly of singing, partly of common discourse, and for which 
a peculiar instrument, bearing the same name, was used, also occurred 
among the works of Alcman, who appears to have borrowed them, as 
well as many other things, from Archilochus||. Alcman blends the 
sentiments and the style of Archilochus, Terpander, and Thaletas, and, 
perhaps, even those of the iEolian lyric poets : hence his works ex- 
hibit a great variety of metre, of dialect, and of general poetical tone. 
Stately hexameters are followed by the iambic and trochaic verse of 
Archilochus, by the ionics and cretics of Olympus and Thaletas, and by 
various sorts of logacedic rhythms. His strophes consisted partly of 
verses of different kinds, partly of repetitions of the same, as in the ode 
which opened with the invocation to Calliope above mentioned %. The 
connexion of two corresponding strophes with a third of a different 



* Schol. Horn. Od. VI. 244. 

f There are only a few passages in Pindar, in which it has heen thought that 
there was a separation of the person of the chorus and the poet; viz. Pyth. v. 68. 
(96.) ix. 98. (174.) Nem. i. 19. (29.) vii. 85. (125.); and these have, by an accu- 
rate interpretation, been reduced to the abovementioned rule. 

I Fragm. 12. See Muller's Dorians, b. iv. ch.'7. § 11. 

§ Tlgoffobia, songs to be sung during a procession to a temple, before the sacrifice. 

|| Above, p. 139, note f, with Aristoxenus ap. Hesych. in v. KAs^/a^/Saj. 

*T Mua ? llyi, KctXXio^a, 6vyuri£ bio;. Dactylic tetrameters of this kind were com- 
bined into strophes, without hiatus and syllaba anceps, that is, after the manner of 
systems. 

02 



196 HISTORY OF THE r . 

kind, called an epode, did not occur in Alcman. He made strophes of 
the same measure succeed each other in an indefinite number, like the 
folic lyric poets : there were, however, odes of his, consisting of 
fourteen strophes, with an alteration (/*era/3o\?/) in the metre after 
the seventh * ; which was of course accompanied with a marked change 
in the ideas and in the whole tone of the poem. 

It ought also to be mentioned that the Laconic metre, a kind of 
anapaestic verse, used as a march (e/i/3ar»7|cnoy), which the Spartan 
troops sang as they advanced to attack the enemy, is attributed to 
Alcman t ; whence it may be conjectured that Alcman imitated Tyr- 
taeus, and composed war-songs similar to his, consisting not of strophes, 
but of a repetition of the same sort of verse. The authority for such 
a supposition is, however, slight. There is not a trace extant of any 
marches composed by Alcman, nor is there any similarity between their 
form and character and any of his poetry with which we are acquainted. 
It is true that Alcman frequently employed the anapaestic metre, but 
not in the same way as Tyrtaeus J, and never unconnected with other 
rhythms. Thus Tyrtaeus, who was Alcman's predecessor by one gene- 
ration, and whom we have already described as an elegiac poet, appears 
to have been the only notable composer of Embateria. N These were 
sung to the flute in the Castorean measure by the whole army ; and, as 
is proved by a few extant verses, contained simple, but vigorous and 
manly exhortations to bravery. The measure in which they were 
written was also called the Messenian, because the second Messenian 
war had given occasion to the composition of war-songs of peculiar 
force and fervour. 

§ 3. Alcman is generally regarded as the poet who successfully over- 
came the difficulties presented by the rough and intractable dialect of 
Sparta, and invested it with a certain grace. And, doubtless, inde- 
pendent of their general Doric form, many Spartan idioms are found 
in his poems §, though by no means all the peculiarities of that dialect ||. 
Alcman's language, therefore, agrees with the other poetical dialects of 
Greece, in not representing a popular dialect in its genuine state, but 
in elevating and refining it by an admixture with the language of epic 
poetry, which may be regarded as the mother and nurse of every variety 
of poetry among the Greeks. 

We may also observe that this tinge of popular Laconian idioms is 
by no means equally strong in all the varieties of Alcman's poetry ; they 

* Hephaest. p. 134. ed. Gaisford. 

t The metrical scholia to Eurip. Hec. 59. 

I According to the Latin metrical writers, Servius and Marins Victorinus, the 
dimeter hypercatalectos, the trimeter catalecticus, and the tetrameter brachycata- 
lectos were called Alcmaniea metra. The embateria were partly in the dimeter 
catalecticus, partly in the tetrameter catalecticus. 

§ As «r fur 6 (,dk\t, for 6^k\», &c), the rough termination gff in pC»«p, Utfa s . 

II For example, not MS&, T^ih^, & K xt Z (for «<rxo ? ), &c. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 197 

are most abundant in certain fragments of a hearty, simple character*, 
in which Alcman depicts his own way of life, his eating and drinking, 
of which, without being absolutely a glutton, he was a great lover f. 

But even here we may trace the admixture with the iEolic character J, 
which ancient grammarians attribute to Alcman. It is explained by 
the fact that Peloponnesus was indebted for the first perfect specimen 
of lyric poetry to an /Eolian of Lesbos, Terpander. In other frag- 
ments the dialect approximates more nearly to the epic, and has re- 
tained only a faint tinge of Dorism ; especially in all the poems in 
hexameters, and, indeed, wherever the poetry assumes a dignified, 
majestic character §. 

Alcman is one of the poets whose image is most effaced by time, and 
of whom we can the least hope to obtain any accurate knowledge. The 
admiration awarded to him by antiquity is scarcely justified by the 
extant remains of his poetry; but, doubtless, this is because they are 
extremely short, or are cited only in illustration of trifles. A true and 
lively conception of nature pervades the whole, elevated by that power 
of quickening the inanimate which descended from remote antiquity : 
thus, for instance, the poet calls the dew, Hersa, a daughter of Zeus 
and Selene, of the God of the Heavens and the Moon |[. 

He is also remarkable for simple and cheerful views of human life, 
connected with an intense enthusiasm for the beautiful in whatsoever 
age or sex, especially for the grace of virgins, the objects of Alcman's 
most ardent homage. The only evidence that his erotic poetry is 
somewhat voluptuous % is to be found in the innocence and simplicity 
with which, in the true Spartan fashion, he regarded the relation 
between the sexes. A corrupt, refined sensuality neither belongs to 
the age in which he lived, nor to the character of his poetry ; and 
although, perhaps, he is chiefly conversant with sensual existence, yet 
indications are not wanting of a quick and profound conception of the 
spiritual **. 

§ 4. The second great choral poet, Stesichorus, has so little in 
common with Alcman, that he can in no respect be regarded as suc- 

* Fragm. 24. 28. 

■f o Toifttpa.'yo; ' AkKftoiv. 

I Especially in the sound 012 for an original ON2, as in (p'i^oicra,. It appears, 
however, that the pure Doric form MoJ<rn ought to he introduced everywhere for 
MoTtret. In the third person plural, Alcman prohahly had, like Pindar, either 
alviovri (fr. 73), or ivIohtiv. The o-l in f^KTi^x, xrfa.(iobiv, is also yEolic ; the pure 
Doric form was xitugfihv, &c. 

§ As in the heautiful fragment, No. 10, in Welcker's collection, which contains 
a description of the repose of night. 

|| Fr. 47. 

*J[ uKoXatrrov, Archytas (o a^ovmos) in Athen. xiii. p. COO. F. 

** Alcman called the memory, the ftv/ipw, by the name (p^aai'ho^xov, " that which 
sees in the mind:" as should he written in Etym. Grud, p. 395. 52. for yxeriVo^xov. 
*^««r< is a well-known Doric form for tp%i<ri. 



198 HISTORY OF THE 

cessor to the Laconian poet, in his endeavours to bring that branch 
of poetry to perfection. We must consider him as starting from the 
same point, but led by the originality of his genius into a totally 
different path. Stesichorus is of rather a later date than Alcman. 
He was born, indeed, just at the period when the first steps towards 
the development of lyric poetry were made by Terpander (Olympiad 
33. 4. 643 b. c. ; according to others, Olympiad 37. b. c. 632), 
but his life was protracted above eighty years (to Olympiad 55. 1. 
560 b. c. ; according to others 56. b. c. 556) ; so that he might be a 
contemporary of the Agrigentine tyrant Phalaris, against whose ambi- 
tious projects he is said by Aristotle to have warned his fellow-citizens 
in an ingenious fable *. According to common tradition, Stesichorus 
was a native of Himera, a city containing a mixed population, half 
Ionic, half Doric, the Himeraeans having come partly from the Chalci- 
dian colony Zancle, partly from Syracuse. But at the time Stesichorus 
was born, Himera was but just founded, and his family could have 
been settled there but a few years. His ancestors, however, were nei- 
ther Zanclaeans nor Syracusans, but dwelt at Mataurus, or Metaurus, a 
city on the south of Italy, founded by the Locrians f. This circum- 
stance throws a very welcome light on the otherwise strange tradition, 
which Aristotle I thought worthy of recording, that Stesichorus was a 
son of Hesiod, by a virgin named Ctimene, of (Eneon, a place in the 
country of the Ozolian Locrians. If we abstract from this what belongs 
to the ancient mode of expression, which generally clothes in the simplest 
forms all relationships of blood, the following will result from the first 
mentioned facts. There was, as we saw above §, a line of epic bards in 
the style of Hesiod, who inhabited (Eneon, and the neighbouring Nau- 
pactus, in the country of the Locrians. A family in which a similar 
practice of the poetical art was hereditary came through the colony 
of Locri in Italy, in which the Ozolian Locrians took peculiar interest, 
to these parts, and settled in Mataurus. From this family sprang Stesi- 
chorus. 

Stesichorus lived at a time when the serene tone of the epos and an 
exclusive devotion to a mythical subject no longer sufficed ; the predo- 
minant tendency of the Greek mind was towards lyric poetry. He 
himself was powerfully affected by this taste, and consecrated his life to' 
the transplantation of all the rich materials, and the mighty and imposing 
shapes, which had hitherto been the exclusive property of the epos, to 
the choral poem. His special business was the training and direction 
of choruses, and he assumed the name of Stesichorus, or leader of 
choruses, his original name being Tisias. This occupation must have 

* Above, ch. xi. § 14. 

f Steph. Byz. in Mdruvgo; , 2r>j<r/^^«j, MaravgTvo; yivo;. See Klein, Fragmenta 
Stesichori, p. 9. 

% In Proclus and Tzetzes, Proleg. to Hesiod. § Ch. 8. § 4. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 199 

remained hereditary in his family in Himera ; a younger Stesichorus of 
Himera came, in Olympiad 73. 1. B.C. 485, to Greece as a poet* ; a 
third Stesichorus of Himera was victor at Athens, doubtless as chorus- 
leader, in Olympiad 102. 3. b. c. 370 f. The eldest of them, Stesi- 
chorus Tisias, made a great change in the artistical form of the chorus. 
He it was who first broke the monotonous alternation of the strophe 
and antistrophe through a whole poem, by the introduction of the epode, 
differing- in measure, and by this means made the chorus stand still J. 
During the strophe, the chorus moved in, a certain evolution, which 
again during the antistrophe was made back to its original station, 
where it remained while the epode was sung. The chorus of Stesi- 
chorus seems to have consisted of a combination of several rows or 
members of eight dancers ; the number eight appears indeed from various 
traditions to have been, as it were, consecrated by him §. The mu- 
sical accompaniment was the cithara. The strophes of Stesichorus were 
of great extent, and composed of different verses, like those of Pindar, 
though of a simpler character. In many poems they consisted of dac- 
tylic series, which were sometimes broken shorter, sometimes extended 
longer, as it were variations of the hexameter. With these Stesichorus 
combined trochaic dipodies ||, by which the gravity of the dactyls was 
somewhat tempered; the metres used by Pindar, and generally for 
all odes in the Dorian style of music, thus arose. Although Stesichorus 
also mainly employed this grave and solemn harmony, yet he himself 
mentions on one occasion the use of the Phrygian, which is characte- 
rized by a deeper pathos, and a more passionate expression %. It appears 
from this fragment that the poet chose, as its metrical form, dactylic sys- 
tems (i. e. combinations of similar series without any close or break), to 
which ponderous trochees were attached **. Elsewhere, Stesichorus used 
also anapaests and choriambics, which correspond in their character to 
the dactylic verses just mentioned. Occasionally, however, he used the 
lighter and rather pleasing than solemn logacedic measure. 

§ 5. As the metres of Stesichorus approach much more nearly to the 
epos than those of Alcman, as his dialect also is founded on the epic, to 

* Maim. Par. ep. 50. f Ibid. ep. 73. 

| See several grammarians and compilers in <rg/« ~2ryiri%ogov ) or OvTt rtfa. 2rwt%»£ov 
ytyvuirxits. 

§ Several grammarians at the explanation of <roW« oxru. 

|1 _/ o _ o. Several verses of greater or less length, formed of dipodies of this 
kind, are called by the grammarians Stesichorean verses. 

«[[ Fragm. 12. Mus. Crit. Cantab. Fasc. VI. Fragm. 39. ed. Klein : 

vuv i'g'jyiov (A"kos \%iv- 

Stesichorus, also, according to Plutarch, used the ug/uartos vopos, which had been 
set by Olympus in the Phrygian a^ovU; above, ch. 12. § 7. 



HISTORY OF THE 

which be gave a different tone only by the most frequent and most cur- 
rent Dorisms, so also with regard to the matter and contents of his 
poems, Stesichorus makes, of all lyric poets, the nearest approach to the 
epic. " Stesichorus," says Quintilian elegantly, " sustained the weight of 
epic poetry with the lyre." We know the epic subjects which he treated 
in this manner; they have a great resemblance to the subjects of the 
shorter epic poems of the Hesiodean school, of which we have spoken 
above. Many of them were borrowed from the great mythic cycle of 
Hercules (whom he, like Pisander, invariably represented with the 
lion's skin, club, and bow); such as his expedition against the triple 
giant of the west, Geryon (Trjpvoylg) \ Scylla (2/cuXXa), whom, in 
the same expedition, Hercules subdued ; the combat with Cycnus 
(Kuwoe) *, the son of Ares, and the dragging of Cerberus (Kipfiepog) 
from the infernal regions. Others related to the mythic cycle of Troy ; 
such as the destruction of Ilium ('IXtov Trepmg), the returns of the 
heroes (Nooroi), and the story of Orestes (Opeareia). Other my- 
thical subjects were, the prizes which Acastus, King of Iolcus, distri- 
buted at the funeral games of his father Pelias (£7rt UeXiy d$Xa) ; 
Eriphyle, who seduced her husband Amphiaraus to join in the expedi- 
tion against Thebes ('EpKpvXa) ; the hunters of the Calydonian boar 
((Tvodijpai, according to the most probable interpretation) ; lastly, a 
poem called Europeia (a title also borne by the epos of Eumelus), 
which, from the little we know of it, seems to have treated of the tradi- 
tional stories of Cadmus, with which that of Europa was interwoven. 
A question here arises, how these epic subjects could be treated in a 
lyric form. It is manifest that these poems could not have had the per- 
fect repose, the vivid and diffuse descriptions, in short all the characte- 
ristics of the epos. To connect with these qualities the accompaniment 
of many voices and instruments, a varied rhythmical structure, and 
choral dancing, would have seemed to the Greeks, with their fine sense 
of harmony and congruity, a monstrous misjoinder. There must, there- 
fore, have been something which induced Stesichorus, or his fellow 
citizens, to take an interest in these heroes and their exploits. Thus in 
Pindar all the mythological narratives have reference to some recent 
event t. In Stesichorus, however, the mythical subject must have been 
treated at greater length, and have occupied nearly the entire poem ; 
otherwise the names of these poems would not have been like those of 
epic compositions. One of them, the Oresteia, was so long, that it was 
divided into two books ; and it contained so much mythical matter, that 
in the Iliac table, a well known ancient bas-relief, the destruction of 
Troy is represented in a number of scenes from this poem. The most 
probable supposition, therefore, is that these poems were intended to be 
represented at the mortuary sacrifices and festivals, which were fre- 

* Ch. 8. (p. 98-9.) f Below, ch. 15. § 1. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 201 

quently celebrated in Magna Grsecia to the Greek heroes, especially to 
those of the Trojan cycle *. 

The entire tone in which Stesichorus treated these mythic narratives 
was also quite different from the epic. It is evident from the fragments 
that he dwelt upon a few brilliant adventures, in which the force aud 
the glory of the heroes was, as it were, concentrated ; and that he gave 
the reins to his fancy. Thus, in an extant fragment, Hercules is de- 
scribed as returning to the god of the sun (Helios), on the goblet on 
which he had swum to the island of Geryoneus ; M Helios, the Hype- 
rionid, stepped into the golden goblet, in order to go, over the ocean, to 
the sacred depths of the dark night to his mother, and wife, and dear 
children; while the son of Zeus (Hercules) entered into the laurel 
grove t." In another, the dream of Clytsemnestra, in the night before 
she was killed, is described : " A serpent seemed to approach her, its 
crest covered with blood ; but, of a sudden, the king of Pleisthenes race 
(Agamemnon) came out of it }." In general, a lyric poet like Stesi- 
chorus was more inclined than an epic poet to alter the current legend ; 
since his object was not so much mere narration, as the praise of indi- 
vidual heroes, and the mythus was always introduced with a view to its 
application. As a proof of this assertion, it is sufficient to refer to the 
story, celebrated in antiquity, of Stesichorus having, in a poem (pro- 
bably the destruction of Troy), attributed all the sufferings of the Trojan 
war to Helen § ; but the deified heroine having, as it was supposed, 
deprived him of his sight, as a punishment for this insult, he composed 
his famous Palinodia, in which he said that the Helen who had been 
seen in Troy, and for whom the Greeks and Trojans fought during 
so many years, was a mere shadow ((pavfia, eidwXov) ; while the true 
Helen had never embarked from Greece. Even this, however, is not to 
be considered as pure invention ; there were in Laconia popular legends 
of Helen's having appeared as a shade long after her death ||, like her 
brothers Castor and Pollux ; and it is possible that Stesichorus may 
have met with some similar story. Stesichorus simply conceived Helen 
to have remained in Greece ; he did not suppose her to have gone to 
Eg-ypt f . 

* Thus in Tarentum hayirfio) were offered to the Atrids, Tydids, Alcids, 
Laertiads (Pseud-Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. 114.); in Metapontum to the Nelids 
(Strabo VI. p. 263,) &c. 

f Fragm. 3. (10. ed. Klein). 

+ Fragm. inc. 1. (43. Klein). This fragment too is in a lyric metre^md ought 
not to be forced into an elegiac distich. 

§ Hence in the Iliac table, Menelaus is represented as attempting to stab Helen 
whom he has just recovered ; while she flies for protection to the temple of 
Aphrodite. 

|j Herod. VI. 61. 

^[ Others supposed that Proteus, the marine demigod skilled in metamorphoses, 
went to the island of Pharos, and there formed a false Helen with which he 
deceived Paris ; a version of the story which even the ancient Scholiasts have con- 



0()2 HISTORY OF THE 

The language of Stesichorus likewise accorded with the tone of his 
poettt . Quintilian, and other ancient critics, state that it corresponded 
w ith the dignity of the persons described by him ; and that he might 
have stood next to Homer, if he had restrained the copiousness of his 
diction. It is possible that, in expressing this opinion, Quintilian did 
not sufficiently advert to the distinction between the epic and lyric 
styles. 

§ G. We have subjoined these remarks to the longer lyric poems of 
Stesichorus, which were nearest to the epos, as it was in these that the 
peculiar character of his poetry was most clearly displayed. Stesi- 
chorus, however, also composed poems in praise of the gods, especially 
paeans and hymns ; not in an epic, but in a lyric form. There were 
also erotic poems of Stesichorus, differing as much as his other produc- 
tions from the amatory lyric poems of the Lesbians. They consisted of 
love-stories; as the Calyce, which described the pure but unhappy love 
of a maiden of that name; and the 1 '' R hadina^ which related the 
melancholy adventures of a Samian brother and sister, whom a Corin- 
thian tyrant put to death out of love for the sister, and jealousy of the 
brother*. 'These are the earliest instances in Greek literature of love- 
stories forming the basis of romantic poetry ; the stories themselves 
probably having been derived from the tales with which the inmates of 
the Greek gynaecea amused themselves. These stories (which were 
afterwards collected by Parthenius, Plutarch, and others) usually be- 
longed, not to the purely mythical period, but either to historical times, 
or to the transition period between fable and history. In this manner 
the story involved the ordinary circumstances of life, while extraordi- 
nary situations could be introduced, serving to show the fidelity of the 
lovers. Of a similar character was the bucolic poem, which Stesichorus 
first raised from a rude strain of merely local interest, to a classical 
branch of Greek poetry. \ The first bucolic poem is said to have been 
sung by Diomus, a cowherd in Sicily, a country abounding in cattlet- 
The hero of this pastoral poetry was the shepherd Daphnis (celebrated 
in Theocritus), who had been beloved by a nymph, and deprived by 
her, out of jealousy, of his sight ; and with whose laments all nature 

founded with that of Stesichorus. As this Proteus was converted hy the Egyptian 
interpreters (X^wiii) into a king of* Egypt, this king was said to have taken Helen 
from Paris, and to have kept her for Menelaus. This was the story which Hero- 
dotus heard in Egypt, II. 112. Euripides, in his Helen, gives quite a new turn to 
the tale. In this play, the gods form a false Helen, whom Paris takes to Troy ; 
the true Helen is carried hy Hermes to the Egyptian king Proteus. In this 
manner, Proteus completely loses the character which he bears in the ancient 
Greek mythus ; but the events tend to situations which suited the pathetic tragedy 
of Euripides. & 

* Compare Strab. VIII. p. 347. D. with Pausan. VII. 5. 6. The chief authority 
for these love-stories is the long excursus in Athenaeus on the popular songs of the 
Greeks, XIV. p. 618. sqq. FY* B 

f BovxoXmtftit, Epicharmus ap. Athen. XIV. p. 619. The song of Eriphanis, 
3W«) \ii^ & piyuXut, appears to have been of native Sicilian origin. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 203 

sympathised. This legend was current in the native country of Stesi- 
ehorus, near the river Himeras, where Daphnis is said to have uttered 
his laments; and near Cephalcedium, where a stone resembling- a man's 
form was said to have once been Daphnis. Himera was the only one 
among the ancient Greek colonies in Sicily, which lay on the northern 
coast of the island ; it was entirely surrounded by the aboriginal inha- 
bitants, the Siculians ; and it is therefore probable that the hero Daphnis, 
and the original form of the pastoral song, belonged to the Siculian 
peasantry *. \ i / /f 

From what precedes, it appears that the poetry of Stesichorus was 
not employed in expressing his own feelings, or describing the events of 
his own life, but that he preferred the past to the present. This cha- 
racter seems to have been common to all the poems of Stesichorus. 
Thus he did not, like Sappho, compose Epithalamia having an imme- 
diate reference to the present, but he took some of his materials from 
mythology. The beautiful Epithalamium of Theocritus f, supposed to 
have been sung by the Laconian virgins before the chamber of Mene- 
laus and Helen, is, in part, imitated from a poem of Stesichorus. 

§ 7. Thus much for the peculiarities of this choral poet, not less re- 
markable in himself, than as a precursor of the perfect lyric poetry of 
Pindar. Our information respecting Arion is far less complete and 
satisfactory ; yet the little that we know of him proves the wide exten- 
sion of lyric poetry in the time of Alcman and Stesichorus. Arion was 
the contemporary of Stesichorus ; he is called the disciple of Alcman, 
and (according to the testimony of Herodotus) flourished during the 
reign of Periander at Corinth, between Olymp. 38. 1. and 48. 4. (628 
and 585 b. c), probably nearer the end than the beginning of this 
period. He was a native of Methymna in Lesbos ; a district in which 
the worship of Bacchus, introduced by the Boeotians, was celebrated 
with orgiastic rites, and with music. Arion was chiefly known in 
Greece as the perfecter of the dithyramb. The dithyramb, as a song 
of Bacchanalian festivals, is doubtless of great antiquity ; its name is 
too obscure to have arisen at a late period of the Greek language, and 
probably originated in the earliest times of the worship of Bacchus J. 
Its character was always, like that of the worship to which it belonged, 
impassioned and enthusiastic ; the extremes of feeling, rapturous plea- 
sure, and wild lamentation, were both expressed in it. Concerning the 
mode of its representation we are but imperfectly informed. Archilo- 
chus says, that " he is able, when his mind is inflamed with wine, to 

^ * It appears from ^Elian V. H., X. 18. that the legend of Daphnis was given in 
Stesichorus, not as it is expanded in Theocrit. Id. I., but as it is touched upon in Id. 
VII. 73. The pastoral legend of the Goathead Comatas, who was inclosed in a box 
by the king's command, and fed by a swarm of bees, sent by the Muses (Theocrit 
VII. 78. sq.) has all the appearance of a story embellished by Stesichorus. ^ 

f Id. XVIII. 

% On the formation of Idugaftflos, see p. 133 note *. 



804 HISTORY OF THE 

sing the dithyramb, the beautiful strain of Dionysus*": from which 
expressions it is probable that in the time of Archilochus, one of a 
band of revellers sometimes sang the dithyramb, while the others 
joined him with their voices. There is, however, no trace of a choral 
performance of the dithyramb at this time. Choruses had been already 
introduced in Greece, but in connexion with the worship of Apollo, and 
they danced to the cithara (<f>6pfiiy£,), the instrument used in this 
worship. In the worship of Dionysus, on the other hand, an irregular 
band of revellers, led by a flute-player, was the prominent feature t. 
Arion, according to the concurrent testimonies of the historians and 
grammarians of antiquity, was the first who practised a chorus in 
the representation of a dithyramb, and therefore gave a regular and 
dignified character to this song, which before had probably consisted of 
irregular expressions of excited feeling, and of inarticulate ejacula- 
tions. This improvement was made at Corinth, the rich and flourish- 
ing city of Periander ; hence Pindar in his eulogy of Corinth exclaims : 
" Whence, but from Corinth, arose the pleasing festivals of Dionysus, 
with the dithyramb, of which the prize is an ox J?" The choruses 
which sang the dithyramb were circular choruses (kvkXioi x°P°0 '•> so 
called, because they danced in a circle round the altar on which the 
sacrifice was burning. Accordingly, in the time of Aristophanes, the 
expressions '* dithyrambic poet," and " teacher of cyclian choruses' 
(KVKXiodidaaKaXog), were nearly synonymous §. With regard to the 
subjects of the dithyrambs of Arion we know nothing, except that he 
introduced the tragic style into them ||. This proves that he had dis- 
tinguished a choral song of a gloomy character, which referred to the 
dangers and sufferings of Dionysus, from the ordinary dithyramb of 
the joyous kind; as will be shown in a subsequent chapter ^[. With 
regard to the musical accompaniment of the dithyrambs of Arion, it 
may be remarked, that the cithara was the principal instrument used 
in it, and not the flute, as in the boisterous comus. Arion was himself 
the first cithara-player of his time : and the exclusive fame of the Les- 
bian musicians from Terpander downwards was maintained by him 

* 'ft; Liuvvtrnv ccvax.ro? xaXov l%dg%ai ft'thes 
Oi^cx. o^iQupupliov o'lvu ervyKiQuvvwh)} tyfnvKt. 
ap. Athen. xiv. p. 628. 
f See ch. iii. 6 5. 

% Pind. 01. xiii. 18. (25.), where the recent editors give a full and accurate ex- 
planation of the matter. 

§ Hence Arion is said to have been the son of Cycleus. 

|| T^ccyiKos rgofo;, Suidas in 'Agiuv, Concerning the satyrs whom Arion is said to 
have used on this occasion, see below, chap. xxi. 

% Chap. xxi. The finest specimen of a dithyramb of the joyful kind is the frag- 
ment of a dithyramb by Pindar, in Dion. Hal. de Comp. Verb. 22. This dithy- 
ramb was intended for the great Dionysia Qra pteyaXa or <ra atrru towwa), which 
are described in it as a great vernal festival, at the season " when the chamber of 
the Hours opens, and the nectarian plants feel the approach pf the fragrant spring." 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 205 

Arion also, according to the well known fable *, played the orthian 
nomef, when he was compelled to throw himself from a ship into the 
sea, and was miraculously saved by a dolphin \. Arion is also stated, 
as well as Terpander, to have composed procemia, that is, hymns to the 
gods, which served as an introduction to festivals §. 

§ 8. In descending to the choral poets who lived nearer the time of 
the Persian war, we meet with two poets of very peculiar characters ; 
the vehement Ibycus, and the tender and refined Simonides. 

Ibycus was a native of Rhegium, the city near the southernmost point 
of Italy, which was closely connected with Sicily, the country of Stesi- 
chorus. Rhegium was peopled partly by Ionians from Chalcis, partly 
by Dorians from Peloponnesus; the latter of whom were a superior 
class. The peculiar dialect formed in Rhegium had some influence on 
the poems of Ibycus; although these were in general written in an epic 
dialect with a Doric tinge, like the poems of Stesichorus ||. Ibycus was 
a wandering poet, as is intimated in the story of his death having been 
attested and revenged by cranes ; but his travels were not, like those of 
Stesichorus, confined to Sicily. He passed a part of his time in Samos 
with Polycrates ; whence the flourishing period of Ibycus may be 
placed at Olymp. 63. (b. c. 528) ^f. We have already explained the 
style of poetry which was admired at the court of Polycrates. Ibycus 
could not here compose solemn hymns to the gods, but must accommo- 
date his Doric cithara, as he was best able, to the strains of Anacreon. 
Accordingly, it is probable that the poetry of Ibycus was first turned 
mainly to erotic subjects during his residence in the court of Poly- 
crates ; and that his glowing love-songs (especially to beautiful youths), 
which formed his chief title to fame in antiquity, were composed at this 
time. 

But that the poetical style of Ibycus resembled that of Stesichorus is 
proved by the fact that the ancient critics often doubted to which of the 
two a particular idea or expression belonged **. It may indeed be 

* Herod. I, 23. This fable probably arose from a sacred offering in a temple at 
Tffinarum, which represented Taras sitting on a dolphin, as he appears on the coins 
of Tarentum. Plutarch, Conv. Sept. Sap. c. 18. mentions the Pythian instead of the 
orthian nome. 

f The orthian nome was mentioned above, chap. xii. § 15, in connexion with Po- 
lymnestus. 

X The nomos ovthios was sung to the cithara (Herod. 1. 24. Aiistoph. Eq. 127G. 
Ran. 1308, et Sehol.), but also to the Phrygian flute (Lucian4). 

§ Suidas in v, The ode to Neptune which ./Elian H. A., xii. 45, ascribes to 
Arion, is copious in words, but poor in ideas, and is quite unworthy of such a poet 
as Arion. It also presupposes the truth of the fable that Arion was saved by a 
dolphin. 

|| A peculiarity of the Rheginian dialect in Stesichorus was the formation of the 
third persons of barytone verbs in n<rr, <p'^yi<ri, "Kiynai, &c. 

% Above, ch. xiii. § 12. 

** Citations of Stesichorus or Ibycus, or (for the same expression) of Stesichorus 
erne? Ibycus, occur in Athen. iv. p. 172 D„ Schol. Von. ad II. xxiv. 259. iii. 114. He- 
sych. in fi^vaxUrut, vol. i. p. 774. ed. Alb., Schol. Aristoph. Av. 1302, Schol. 



206 HISTORY OP THE 

conjectured that this doubt arose from the works of these two poets being 
united in the same collection, like those of Hipponax and Ananius, or 
of Simonides and Bacchylides ; but their works would not have been so 
united by the ancient editors if there had not been a close affinity 
between them. The metres of Ibycus also resemble those of Stesicho- 
rus, being in general dactylic series, connected together into verses ot 
different lengths, but sometimes so long, that they are rather to be 
called systems than verses. Besides these, Ibycus frequently uses 
logacedic verses of a soft or languid character : and in general his 
rhythms are less stately and dignified, and more suited to the expression 
of passion, than those of Stesichorus. Hence the effeminate poet Aga- 
thon is represented by Aristophanes as appealing to Ibycus with Ana- 
creon and Alcaeus, who had made music more sweet, and worn many- 
coloured fillets (in the oriental fashion), and had led the wanton Ionic 
dance *. 

§ 9. The subjects of the poems of Ibycus appear also to have a 
strong affinity with those of the poems of Stesichorus. For although 
no poems with such names as Cycnus or the Orestea are attributed to 
Ibycus ; yet so many peculiar accounts of mythological stories, espe- 
cially relating to the heroic period, are cited from his poems, that it 
seems as if he too had written long poems on the Trojan war, the ex- 
pedition of the Argonauts, and other similar subjects. That, like 
Stesichorus, he dwelt upon the marvellous in the heroic mythology, is 
proved by a fragment in which Hercules is introduced as saying : " I 
also slew the youths on white horses, the sons of Molione, the twins 
with like heads and connected limbs, both born in the silver egg t." 

The erotic poetry of Ibycus is however more celebrated. We know 
that it consisted of odes to youths, and that these breathed a fervour of 
passion far exceeding that expressed in any similar productions of 
Greek literature. Doubtless the poet gave utterance to his own feel- 
ings in these odes; as indeed appears from the extant fragments. 
Nevertheless the length of the strophes and the artificial structure of 
the verses prove that these odes were performed by choruses. Birth- 
days or other family festivals or distinctions in the gymnasia may have 
afforded the poet an opportunity of coming with a chorus into the 
court-yard of the house, and offering his congratulations in the most 
imposing and brilliant manner. The occasions of these poetical con- 
gratulations were doubtless the same as those which gave rise to the 
painted vases in Magna Graecia, with the inscription " the boy is beau- 
tiful" (»caXoe 6 7rcuc), and scenes from gymnastic exercises and 
social life. But that in the poems of Ibycus, as well as of Pindar, the 

yratislav. ad Pind. 01. ix. 128. («j vifi "Ifiuxov xu) 2t»^o^v), Etymol. Gud. in 

«T££<ry<j;, p. 98. 31. 

* Thesm. 161. 

f Ap. Athen. p. 57 F. (Fr. 27. coll. Schneidewin). 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 207 

chorus was the organ of the poet's thoughts and feelings, is sufficiently 
proved (as has been already remarked) by the extant fragments. In 
a very beautiful fragment, the versification of which expresses the course 
of the feeling with peculiar art, Ibycus says*:f^Lln the spring the 
Cydonian apple-trees flourish, watered by rivulets from the brooks in 
the untrodden garden of the virgins, and the grapes which grow under 
the shady tendrils of the vine.*-"But Eros gives me peace at no season ; 
like a Thracian tempest, gleaming with fightning, he rushes from 
Cypris, and, full of fury, he stirs up my heart from the bottom. " In 
some other extant verses he saysf : " Again Eros looks at me from 
beneath his black eyelashes with melting glances, and drives me with 
blandishments of all kinds into the endless nets of Cypris. I tremble 
at his attack ; as a harnessed steed which contends for the prize in the 
sacred games, when he approaches old age, unwillingly enters the race- 
course with the rapid chariot." 

These amatory odes of Ibycus did not however consist merely of 
descriptions of his passion, which could scarcely have afforded sufficient 
materials for choral representation. He likewise called in the assist- 
ance of mythology in order to elevate, by a comparison with divine or 
heroic natures, the beauty of the youth or his own passion. Thus in a 
poem of this kind, addressed to Gorgias, Ibycus told the story of 
Ganymedes and Tithonus, both Trojans and favourites of the gods ; 
who were described as contemporary J, and were associated in the 
narrative. Ganymedes is carried off by Zeus in the form of an eagle, 
in order to become his favourite and cup-bearer in Olympus ; and, at 
the same time, Eros incites the rising Aurora to bear away from Ida, 
Tithonus, a Trojan shepherd and prince §. The perpetual youth of 
Ganymedes, the short manhood and the melancholy old age of Tithonus, 
probably gave the poet occasion to compare the different passions which 
they excited, and to represent that of Zeus as the more noble, that of 
Aurora the less praiseworthy. 

§ 10. Leaving Ibycus in the obscurity which envelopes all the Greek 
lyric poets anterior to Pindar, we come to a brighter point in Simonides. 
This poet has been already described as one of the greatest masters of 
the elegy and the epigram ; but. a full account of him has been reserved 
for this place. 

Simonides was born at Julis in the island of Ceos, which was in- 



* Fragm. l.coll. Schneidewin. The end of the fragment is very difficult; the 
translation is made from the following alteration of the text : uripfirtfri xgurmu; 
KB^ofav truXa.<Tffuv hpiTipas <p%ivas. 

f Schol. Plat. Parm. p. 137. A. (Fragm. 2. coll. Schneidewin). 

X After the Little Iliad, in which Ganymedes is the son of Laomedon : Schol. Vat. 
ad Eurip. Troad. 822. Elsewhere Tithonus is his son. 

§ This account of the poem of Stesichorus is taken from Schol. Apollon. Rhod. 
III. 158. compared with Nounus Dionys. xv.278. ed. Graefe. 



HISTORY OF THE 

habited by Ionians ; according to his own testimony*, about Olymp. 
56. 1. b. c. 556. He lived, according to a precise account, 89 years, 
and died in 78. 1. R. c. 468. He belonged to a family which sedu- 
lously cultivated the musical arts ; his grandfather on the paternal side 
had been a poetf; Bacchylides, the lyric poet, was his nephew; and 
Simonides the younger, known by the name of " the genealogist," on 
account of a work on genealogies (7r£pi yevcaXoytwv), was his grand- 
son. He himself exercised the functions of a chorus-teacher in the 
town of Carthsea in Ceos ; and the house of the chorus (xop^yeioy) 
near the temple of Apollo was his customary abode }. This occupa- 
tion was to him, as to Stesichorus, the origin of his poetical efforts. The 
small island of Ceos at this time contained many things which were 
likely to give a good direction to a youthful mind. The lively genius 
of the Ionic race was here restrained by severe principles of modera- 
tion (aufypoovvrj) ; the laws of Ceos are celebrated for their excel- 
lence §; and although Prodicus of Ceos is named among the sophists 
attacked by Socrates, yet he was considered as a man of probity, and the 
friend of a beneficent philosophy. Simonides, also, appears throughout 
his whole life, to have been attached to philosophy; and his poetical 
genius is characterized rather by versatility and purity of taste than by 
fervid enthusiasm. Many ingenious apophthegms and wise sayings are 
attributed to him, nearly resembling those of the seven sages ; for ex- 
ample, the evasive answer to the question, what is God ? is attributed 
both to Simonides and Thales: in the one anecdote the questioner 
is Hiero, in the other Croesus. Simonides himself is sometimes reck- 
oned among the philosophers, and the sophists considered him as a 
predecessor in their art. The 6 " moderation of Simonides" became 
proverbial || ; a modest consciousness of human weakness, and a re- 
cognition of a superior power, are everywhere traceable in his poetry. 
It is likewise recorded that Simonides used, and perfected, the contri- 
vances which are known by the name of the Mnemonic art. 

It must be admitted, that, in depth and novelty of ideas, and in the 
fervour of poetical feeling, Simonides was far inferior to his contem- 
porary Pindar. But the practical tendency of his poetry, the worldly 
wisdom, guided by a noble disposition, which appeared in it, and the 
delicacy with which he treated all the relations of states and rulers, 
made him the friend of the most powerful and distinguished men of his 



* In the epigram in Planudes, Jacobs Anthol. Palat. Append. Epigr. 79. (203 
Schneidewin). 

f Maim. Par. ep. 49. according to Boeckh's explanation, Corp. Inscrip. vol. ii. 
p. 319. 

+ Chamaeleon ap. Ath. x. p.45G. E. 

^ Midler's ./Eginetica, p. 132. note u. 

\\ 'II Siftuvilou ffuQooauvYi . Aristides -rtfi roZ <?ra^u(p6. III. p. 0^5 A. Canter. II. 
p. 51 U. Dindorf. Sunonidis reliquiae ed. schneidewin, p. xxxiii. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 209 

age. Scarcely any poet of antiquity enjoyed so much consideration in 
his lifetime, or exercised so much influence upon political events, as 
Simonides. He was one of the poets entertained by Hipparchus the 
Tisistratid (Olymp. 63. 2. — 66. 3. b. c. 527—14.), and was highly 
esteemed by him. He was much honoured by the families of the 
Aleuads and Scopads, who at that time ruled in Thessaly, as powerful 
and wealthy nobles, in their cities of Larissa and Crannon, and partly 
as kings of the entire country. These families attempted, by their 
hospitality and liberality to the poets and wise men whom they enter- 
tained, either to soften the rough nature of the Thessalians, or, at least, 
to cover it with a varnish of civilization. That, however, they were not 
always equally liberal to Simonides, appears from the anecdote that 
Scopas once refused to give him more than half the promised reward, 
and referred him for the other half to the Dioscuri, whom he had also 
praised in his ode ; and that, in consequence, the Dioscuri saved 
Simonides when the house fell upon the impious Scopas*. Simonides 
appears to have passed much of the latter part of his life in Sicily, 
chiefly with the tyrant of Syracuse. That he was in high honour at 
this court is proved by the well attested story, that when, after Gelo's 
death, a discord arose between the allied and closely connected families 
of the tyrants of Syracuse and Agrigentum, Hiero of Syracuse and 
Theroof Agrigentum, with their armies, were standing opposite to each 
other on the river Gelas, and would have decided their dispute with 
arms, if Simonides (who, like Pindar, was the friend of both tyrants) 
had not restored peace between them (Olymp. 76. 1. b. c. 476). But 
the high reputation of Simonides among the Greeks is chiefly apparent 
in the time of the Persian war. He was in friendly intercourse both 
with Themistocles and the Spartan general Pausanias ; the Corin- 
thians sought to obtain his testimony to their exploits in the Persian 
war ; and he, more than any other poet, partly at the wish of others, 
and partly of his own accord, undertook the celebration of the great 
deeds of that period. The poems which he wrote for this purpose were 
for the most part epigrams ; but some were lyric compositions, as the 
panegyric of those who had fallen at Thermopylae, and the odes on the 
sea-fights of Artemisium and Salamis. Others were elegiac^ as the 
elegy to those who fought at Marathon, already mentioned. 

§ 11. The versatility of mind and variety of knowledge, which Simo- 
nides appears from these accounts to have possessed, are connected with 
his facility of poetical composition. Simonides was probably the most 
prolific lyric poet whom Greece had seen, although all his productions 
did not descend to posterity. He gained (according to the inscription 

* That the ancients themselves had difficulties in ascertaining the true version of 
this story, appears from Quintilian, Inst. xi. 2. 1 1 ; it is however certain that tho 
family of the Scopads at that time suffered some great misfortune which Simonides 
lamented in a threne : Phavoriu, an. Stub. Serin, (JV. 62. 

P 



OK) HISTORY OF THE 

of ■ votive tablet, written by himself*) £6 oxen and tripoas in poetical 
contests ; and yet prizes of this kind could only be gained at public 
festivals, such as the festival of Bacchus at Athens. Simonides, ac- 
cording- to his own testimony, conquered at this latter festival in 
Olymp. 75. 4. b. c. 476, with a cyclian chorus of 50 men. The muse of 
Simonides was, however, far oftener in the pay of private men ; he was 
the first who sold his poems for money, according to the frequent re- 
proach of the ancients. Thus Socrates in Plato f says that Simonides 
was often forced to praise a tyrant or other powerful man, without 
being convinced of the justice of his praises. 

Among the poems which Simonides composed for public festivals, 
were hymns and prayers (/car£t»x«0 to various gods, paeans to Apollo, 
hyporchemes, dithyrambs, and parthenia. In the hyporchemes Simo- 
nides seemed to have excelled himself; so great a master was he of the 
art of painting, by apt rhythms and words, the acts which he wished to 
describe ; he says of himself that he knows how to combine the plastic 
movements of the feet with the voice J. His dithyrambs were not, ac- 
cording to their original purpose, dedicated to Dionysus, but admitted 
subjects of the heroic mythology ; thus a dithyramb of Simonides bore 
the title of Memnon §. This transfer to heroes, of poems properly be- 
longing to Dionysus will be considered more fully in connexion with 
the subject of tragedy. Moreover the odes just mentioned, which cele- 
brated those who fell at Thermopylae and in the sea-fights against the 
Persians, were doubtless intended to be performed at public festivals in 
honour of victories. 

Among the poems which Simonides composed for private persons, 
the Epinikia and Threnes are worthy of especial notice. At this period 
the Epinikia — songs which were performed at a feast in honour of a 
victor in public and sacred games, either on the scene of the conflict, 
or at his return home — first received the polish of art from the hands 
of the choral poets. At an earlier age, a few verses, like those of Ar- 
chilochus, had answered the same purpose. The Epinikia of Simonides 
and Pindar are nearly contemporaneous with the erection of statues in 
honour of victorious combatants, which first became common about 
Olymp. 60, and, especially in the time of the Persian war, employed 
the most eminent artists of the schools of Mgma and Sicyon. A ge- 
neral idea of the structure of the epinikia of Simonides may be formed 
from those of Pindar (of which a copious analysis will be found in the 
next chapter). In these odes, too, the celebration of mythical heroes 
(as of the Dioscuri in the epinikion of Scopas) was closely connected 
with the praise of the victor. General reflections and apophthegms 
were also applied to his peculiar circumstances. Thus in the same ode, 
the general maxim was stated, that the gods alone could be always 
* Anthol. Palat. vi. 213. f Protag. p. 346. B. 

X Plutarch, Sympos.ix. 15. 2. $ Straboxv. p. 728. B. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 211 

good : that no man could be invariably good or bad, but could only act 
virtuously by the grace of the gods, and upon this principle the saying 
of Pittacus, " it is difficult to be good," was censured as requiring too 
much, and probably was applied for the purpose of extenuating some 
faults in the life of the victorious prince*. 

We should be guilty of injustice to Simonides were we to conclude 
that he did violence to his own convictions, and offered mercenary and 
bespoken homage; we rather discover a trace of the mild and humane, 
though somewhat lax and commodious, opinions on morals, prevalent 
among the Ionians. Among the Dorians, and in part also among the 
iEolians, law and custom were more rigorous in their demands upon 
the constancy and the virtue of mankind. 

The epinikia of Simonides appear to have been distinguished from 
those of Pindar mainly in this; that the former dwelt more upon the 
particular victory which gave occasion to his song, and described all 
its details with greater minuteness; while Pindar, as we shall see, 
passes lightly over the incident, and immediately soars into higher 
regions. In an epinikion which Simonides composed for Leophron 
1he son of [ the" tyrant Anaxilas and his vicegerent in Rhegium f» 
and in which he had to celebrate a victory obtained with a chariot 
drawn by mules (airyvr)), the poet congratulated the victorious ani- 
mals, dexterously passing in silence over the meaner, and directing 
attention to the nobler, side of their parentage: V Hail, ye daughters 
of storm-footed steeds !" Simonides, too, in these songs of victory more 
frequently indulged in pleasantry than befitted a poem destined to be 
recited at a sacred feast. ; as, for example, in the epinikion composed in 
honour of an Athenian who had conquered Crios of Mg'ma. in wrestling 
at Olympia; where he plays upon the name of the defeated combatant : 
" Not ill has the ram (6 Kpiog) got himself shorn by venturing into the 
magnificent grove, the sanctuary of Zeus $". 

But the merits of Simonides were still more remarkable (as we have 
already seen in treating of the elegy) in dirges (Sprjvoi). His style, as 

* See this long fragment from the odes of Simonides in Plato Protag. p. 339. sq. 

f As the historical relations are difficult of comprehension, I remark briefly, that 
Anaxilas was tyrant of Rhegium, and, from about 01. 71. 3. (b.c. 494), of Messene; 
and that he dwelt in the latter city, leaving Leophron to administer the government 
of Rhegium. On the death of Anaxilas in Olymp. 76. 1. (n. c. 476), Leophron, as 
his eldest son, succeeded him in the city of Messene : and the freedman Micythus 
was to administer Rhegium for the younger sons, but he was soon compelled to 
abandon his office. For these facts, see Herod, vii. 170. Diod. xi. 48. 66. Heraclid. 
Pont. pol. 25. Dionys. Hal. Exc. p. 539. Vales. Dionys. Hal. xix. 4. Mai. Athen. 
i. p. 3. Pausan. v. 26. 3. Schol. Pind. Pyth. II. 34. Justin, iv. 2, xxi. 3. Macrob. 
Sat. I. 11. The Olympic victory of Leophron (by some writers ascribed to Anaxi- 
las) must have taken place before Olymp. 76. 1. n. c.476. 

I That the words 'Esrs^o Kfio; ohx. uuxuus &c. are to be understood as is indi- 
cated in the text, is proved by the manner in which Aristoph. Nub. 1355. gives the 
substance of the song, which was sung at Athens at meals, from a patriotic interest, 
like a scolion. The contest must be placed about Olymp. 70. a. c. 500 

P2 



212 HISTORY OF THE 

an ancient critic observes, was not as lofty as that of Pindar ; but what 
he lost in sublimity he "gained in pathos *. While Pindar's soaring 
flio-hts extolled the happiness of the dead who had finished their earthly 
course with honour, and enjoyed the glories allotted to them in another 
existence, Simonides gave himself up to the genuine feelings of 
human nature ; he expressed grief for the life that was extinguished ; 
the fond regret of the survivors ; and sought consolation rather after 
the manner of the Ionian elegiac poets, in the perishableness and weari- 
ness of human life. The dirges of Simonides on the hapless Scopad, 
and the Aleuad Antiochus, son of Echecratides t, were remarkable ex- 
amples of this style ; and doubtless the celebrated lament of Danae 
was part of a threne. Enclosed with her infant Perseus in a chest, and 
exposed to the raging of the storm, she extols the happiness of the un- 
conscious sleeping babe, in expressions full of the charm of maternal 
tenderness and devotion {. 

§ 12. Simonides did not, like Pindar, in the overflowing riches of 
his genius, touch briefly on thoughts and feelings ; he wrought out 
every thing in detail with care and finish § ; his verses are like a 
diamond which throws a sparkling light from each of its many polished 
faces. If we analyze a passage, like the fragment from the eulogy on 
the heroes of Thermopylae, we are struck with the skill and grace with 
which the hand of the master plays with a single thought ; the glory of 
a great action before which all sorrow disappears ; and the various 
lights under which he presents it. 

"Those who fell at Thermopylae have an illustrious fate, a noble des- 
tiny : their tomb is an altar, their dirge a song of triumph. And 
neither eating rust, nor all-subduing time, shall obliterate this epitaph 
of the brave. Their subterranean chamber has received the glory of 
Hellas as its inhabitant. Of this, Leonidas, the king of Sparta, bears 
witness, by the fair and undying renown of virtue which he left behind 
him ||." Some idea may be formed of this same kind of description 
naturally leading to a light and agreeable tissue of thoughts ; of this 
easy graceful style of Simonides, so extremely dissimilar to that of 
Pindar, from a feeble prosaic translation of another fragment taken 
from an ode to a conqueror in the Pentathlon, which treats of Orpheus : 

" Countless birds flew around his head ; fishes sprang out of the 
dark waters at his beautiful song. Not a breath of wind arose to rustle 
the leaves of the trees, or to interrupt the honied voice which was 

* To oiMrlX,tff6eu fth i*.iyaXo<XB%wZs u; Illv'ia.pos, u\>.u, Xu.fartxus. Dion. Hal. Cens. Vet. 
Script, ii. 6. p. 420. Reiske. 

\ The son of the Echecratides, who was mentioned in ch. xiii. § 11. in connexion 
with Anacreon, and the elder brother of Orestes. 

\ Dionys. Hal. de Verb. Comp. 26. Fr. 7. Gaisford. 50. Schneidewin. 

o Simonides said that poetry was vocal painting. Plutarch, de Glor. Ath. 3. 

II Diod.xi II Fr. 16. Gaisf. 9. Schneid. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 213 

wafted to the ears of mortals. As when, in the wintry moon, Zeus ap- 
points fourteen days as the sacred brooding time of the gay-plumed 
halcyons, which the earth-dwellers call the sleep of the winds*." Willi 
this smooth and highly polished style of composition every thing in the 
poetry of Simonides is in the most perfect harmony; the choice of 
words, which seeks, indeed, the noble and the graceful, yet departs 
less widely from the language of ordinary life than that of Pindar ; 
and the treatment of the rhythms which is distinguished from that 
of the Theban poet by a stronger preference for light and flowing 
measures (more especially the logaoedic) and by less rigorous rules of 
metre. 

§ 13. Bacchylides, the nephew of Simonides, adhered closely to the 
system and the example of his uncle. He flourished towards the close 
of the life of Simonides, with whom he lived at the court of Iliero in 
Syracuse; little more of his history is known. That his poetry was 
but an imitation of one branch of that of Simonides, cultivated with 
great delicacy and finish, is proved by the opinions of ancient critics ; 
among whom Dionysius adduces perfect correctness and uniform ele- 
gance as the characteristics of Bacchylides. His genius and art were 
chiefly devoted to the pleasures of private life, love and wine ; and, 
when compared with those of Simonides, appear marked by greater 
sensual grace and less moral elevation. Among the kinds of choral 
poetry which he employed, besides those of which he had examples in 
Simonides and Pindar, we find erotic songs: such, for example, as that 
in which a beautiful maiden is represented, in the game of the Cottabus, 
as raising her white arm and pouring out the wine for the youths')' ; a 
description which could apply only to a Hetuera partaking of the ban- 
quets of men. 

In other odes, which were probably sung to cheer the feast, and 
which were transformed into choral odes from scolia, the praise of wine 
is celebrated as follows J : " A sweet compulsion flows from the wine 
cups and subdues the spirit, while the wishes of love, which are 
mingled with the gifts of Dionysus, agitate the heart. The thoughts 
of men take a lofty flight; they overthrow the embattled walls of 
cities, and believe themselves monarchs of the world. The houses 

* Fr. 18. Schneidewin. 

f Athen.xi. p. 782. xvi.p. 667. Fr. 23. ed. Neue. 

I Athen. ii. p. 39. Fr. 26. Neue. The ode consists of short strophes in the Doric 
measure, which are to be reduced to the following metre. 



/ 


o o 


_ 


oo _ 


O 


_ 


o _ 


— 


7 


o o 




o o _ 


_ 


/ 


O — 


«l 


/ 


o o 


_ 


O O — 


— 


/ 


o _ 


o 



o / o_ o /oo 



This arrangement necessitates no other alterations than those which have been 
for other reasons : except that ecuroh, * straightway s,' should be written for avrcs 
in v. 6. 



0[\ HISTORY OF THE 

glitter with gold and ivory ; corn-bearing ships bring hither from 
Egypt, across the glancing deep, the abundance of wealth. To such 
heights soars the spirit of the drinker." Here too we remark that ela- 
borate and brilliant execution which is peculiar to the school of Simo- 
nides ; and the same is shown in all the longer fragments of Bacchy- 
hdes, among which we shall only quote the praise of peace: 

" To mortals belong lofty peace, riches, and the blossoms of honey- 
voiced song. On altars of fair workmanship burn thighs of oxen and 
thick-fleeced sheep in golden flames to the gods. The cares of the 
youths are, gymnastic exercises, flute-playing, and joyous revelry (avXoi 
koi kSjjloi). ' But the black spiders ply their looms in the iron-bound 
edges of the shields, and the rust corrodes the barbed spear-head, and 
the two-edged sword. No more is heard the clang of brazen trumpets ; 
and beneficent sleep, the nurse and soother of our souls, is no longer 
scared from our eyelids. The streets are thronged with joyous guests, 
and songs of praise to beautiful youths resound * ."Y 

We recognise here a mind which dwells lovingly on the description 
of these gay and pleasing scenes, and paints itself in every feature, mit 
without penetrating deeper than the ordinary observation of men reaches. 
Bacchylides, like Simonides, transfers the difFuseness of the elegy to 
the choral lyric poem ; although he himself composed no elegies, and 
followed the traces of his uncle only as an epigrammatist. The reflec- 
tions scattered through his lyrics, on the toils of human life, the insta- 
bility of fortune, on resignation to inevitable evils, and the rejection of 
vain cares, have much of the tone of the Ionic elegy. The structure of 
Bacchylides' verse is generally very simple ; nine tenths of his odes, to 
judge from the fragments, consisted of dactylic series and trochaic dipo- 
dias, as we find in those odes of Pindar which were written in the Doric 
mode. Bacchylides, however, gave a lighter character to this measure ; 
inasmuch as in the places where the syllable might be either long or 
short, he often preferred the latter. 

We find, in his poems, trochaic verses of great elegance ; as, for ex- 
ample, a fragment, preserved by Athenaeus, of a religious poem in 
which the Dioscuri are invited to a feast f. But its character is feeble 
and languid ; and how different from the hymn of Pindar, the third 
among the Olympian odes, in celebration of a similar feast of the 
Dioscuri, held by Theron in Agrigentum ! 

§ 14. The universal esteem in which Simonides and Bacchylides were 
held in Greece, and their acknowledged excellence in their art, did not 
prevent some of their contemporaries from striking into various other 
paths, and adopting other styles of treating lyric poetry. Lasos of 
Hermione was a rival of Simonides during his residence in Athens, and 

* Stobaeus, Serm. LI II. p. 209. Grot. Fr. 12. Neue. 
f Athen. xi. p. 500 B. Fr. 27. Neue. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 215 

likewise enjoyed high favour at the court of Hipparchus*. It is how- 
ever difficult to ascertain, from the very scanty accounts we possess of 
this poet, wherein consisted the point of contrast between him and his 
competitor. He was more peculiarly a dithyrambic poet, and was the 
first who introduced contests in dithyrambs at Athens t, probably in 
Olymp. 68. 1. b. c. 508 J. This style predominated so much in 
his works, that he gave to the general rhythms of his odes a dithy- 
rambic turn, and a free movement, in which he was aided by the variety 
and flexibility of tone of the flute, his favourite instrument §. He was 
also a theorist in his art, and investigated the laws of music (t. e. 
the relation of musical intervals to rapidity of movement), of which 
later musicians retained much. He was the instructor of Pindar in 
lyric poetry. It is also very possible that these studies led him to 
attach excessive value to art; for he was guilty of over- refinement in 
the rhythm and the sound of words, as, for example, in his odes written 
without the letter a (a<nypn «cW), the hissing sound of which is en- 
tirely avoided as dissonant. 

Timocreon the Rhodian was a genius of an entirely peculiar cha- 
racter. Powerful both as an athlete and a poet, he transferred the 
pugnacity of the Palaestra to poetry. To the hate which he bore in political 
life to Themistocles, and, on the field of poetry, to Simonides, he owes 
his chief celebrity among the ancients. In an extant fragment || he bit- 
terly reproaches the Athenian statesman for the arbitrary manner in which 
he settled the affairs of the island, recalling exiles, and banishing others, 
of which Timocreon himself was one of the victims. He attacks his 
enemy with the heavy pompous measure of the Dorian mode, as with the 
shock of a catapulta, though on other occasions he composed in elegiac 
distichs and measures of the iEolic kind ; and it cannot be denied that his 
vituperation receives singular force from the stateliness of the expression, 
and the grandeur of the form. Timocreon seems to have ridiculed and 
parodied Simonides on account of some tricks of his art, as where 
Simonides expresses the same thought in the same words only trans- 
posed, first in an hexameter, then in a trochaic tetrameter ^f . 

The opposition in which we find Pindar with Simonides and Bac- 
chylides is of a much nobler character. For though the desire to 

* Aristoph. Vesp. 1410. comp. Herod, viii. 6. 

t Schol. Aristoph. ubi sup. 

I The statement of the Parian marble, ep. 46. appears to refer to the cyclic 
choruses. 

§ Plutarch de Mus. 39. The fragment of a hymn by Lasus to Demeter, in 
Athen. xiv. p. G24 E., agrees very well with this account. 

|| Plutarch, Themist. 21. 

^[ Anthol. Pal. xiii. 30. Concerning this enmity, see also Diog. Laert. ii. 46, and 
Suidas in Tip,ox£iav. The citation from Simonides and Timoeveon in Walz. Khet. 
Graec. vol. ii. p. 10, is probably connected with their quarrel. 



216 HISTORY OF THE 

stand highest in the favour of the Syracusan tyrant, Hiero, and Thero 
of Agrigentum stimulated the jealousy between these two poets, yet the 
real cause lies deeper ; it is to be found in the spirit and temper of the 
men ; and the contest which necessarily arose out of this diversity, does 
no dishonour to either party. 

The ancient commentators on Pindar refer a considerable number of 
passages to this hostility * : and in general these are in praise of genuine 
wisdom as a gift of nature, a deep rooted power of the mind, and in 
depreciation of acquired knowledge in the comparison ; or the poet 
represents genial invention as the highest of qualities, and demands 
novelties even in mythic narratives. On the contrary, Simonides and 
Bacchylides thought themselves bound to adhere faithfully to tradition, 
and reproved any attempt to give a new form to the stories of antiquity t. 



CHAPTER XV. 



§ 1. Pindar's descent; his early training in poetry and music. § 2. Exercise of his 
art ; his independent position with respect to the Greek princes and republics. 
§ 3. Kinds of poetry cultivated by him. § 4. His Epinikia ; their origin and objects. 
§ 5. Their two main elements, general remarks, and mythical narrations. § 6. 
Connexion of these two elements ; peculiarities of the structure of Pindar's odes. 
6 7. Variety of tone in his odes, according to the different musical st}des. 

§ 1. Pindar was born in the spring of 522 b. c. (Olymp. 64. 3); 
and, according to a probable statement, he died at the age of eighty J. 
He was therefore nearly in the prime of his life at the time when 
Xerxes invaded Greece, and the battles of Thermopylse and Salami's 
were fought. He thus belongs to that period of the Greek nation, 
when its great qualities were first distinctly unfolded; and when it ex- 
hibited an energy of action, and a spirit of enterprise, never afterwards 
surpassed, together with a love of poetry, art, and philosophy, which 
produced much, and promised to produce more. The modes of 
thought, and style of art, which arose in Athens after the Persian war, 
must have been unknown to him. He was indeed the contemporary 
of iEschylus, and he admired the rapid rise of Athens in the Persian 

* 01. II. 86. (154). IX. 48 (74). Pyth. IT. 52. (97.) and passim Nem. III. 80. (143). 
IV. 37. (60). Isthm. 11.6.(10). 

f See Plutarch, Num. 4. Fr. 37. Neue, and Clem. Strom, v. p. 687. Pott. Fr. 13. 
Neue. 

X For Pindar's life, see Boeckh's Pindar, torn. iii. p. 12. To the authorities there 
mentioned, may be added the Introduction of Eustathius to his Commentary on 
Pindar in Kustathii Opuscula, p. 32. ed. Tafel. 1832. (Eustath. ProoDm. Comment. 
Pindar, ed. Schneidewin. 1837.) 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 217 

war ; calling it " The Pillar of Greece, brilliant Athens, the worthy 
theme of poets." But the causes which determined his poetical cha- 
racter are to besought in an earlier period, and in the Doric and iEolic 
parts of Greece ; and hence we shall divide Pindar from his contempo- 
rary iEschylus, by placing the former at the close of the early period, 
the latter at the head of the new period of literature. 

Pindar's native place was Cynocephalae, a village in the territory of 
Thebes, the most considerable city of Bceotia. Although in his time 
the voices of Pierian bards, and of epic poets of the Hesiodean school 
had long been mute in Bceotia, yet there was still much love for music 
and poetry, which had taken the prevailing form of lyric and choral 
compositions. That these arts were widely cultivated in Bceotia is 
proved by the fact that two women, Myitis and Corinna, had attained 
great celebrity in them during the youth of Pindar. Both were com- 
petitors with Pindar in poetry. Myrtis strove with him for a prize at 
public games : and although Corinna said, " It is not meet that the 
clear toned Myrtis, a woman born, should enter the lists with Pindar * :" 
yet she is said (perhaps from jealousy of his growing fame) to have 
often contended against him in the agones, and to have gained the 
victory over him five times f. Pausanias, in his travels, saw at Tanagra, 
the native city of Corinna, a picture in which she was represented as 
binding her head with a fillet of victory which she had gained in a con- 
test with Pindar. He supposes that she was less indebted for this 
victory to the excellence of her poetry than to her Boeotian dialect, 
which was more familiar to the ears of the judges at the games, and to 
her extraordinary beauty. Corinna also assisted the young poet with 
her advice; it is related of her that she recommended him to ornament 
his poems with mythical narrations, but that when he had composed a 
hymn, in the first six verses of which (still extant) almost the whole of the 
Theban mythology was introduced, she smiled and said, " We should 
sow with the hand, not with the whole sack." Too little of the poetry 
of Corinna has been preserved to allow of our forming a safe judgment 
of her style of composition. The extant fragments refer mostly to my- 
thological subjects, particularly to heroines of the Boeotian legends ; 
this, and her rivalry with Pindar, show that she must be classed not 
in the Lesbian school of lyric poets, but among the masters of choral 
poetry. 

The family of Pindar seems to have been skilled in music ; we learn 
from the ancient biographies of him that his father, or his uncle, was a 
flute-player. Flute-playing (as we have more than once remarked ) 

* The following is the passage in Comma's dialect : 
fjt,(f/.<pof/.Yt %l xb XtyovQKv MovgriV leuvycc 
on (idvec <pdv(r ' i'/3« Yliviei^oio 'Xor^ toiv. 
Apollon. de Pronom. p. 924. B. 
f ^lian,V. H.xiii.24. 



HISTORY OF THE 

was brought from Asia Minor into Greece ; its Phrygian origin may 
perhaps be indicated by the fact that Pindar had in his house at Thebes 
a small temple of the Mother of the gods and Pan, the Phrygian 
deities, to whom the first hymns to the flute were supposed to have beeu 
sung 1 *. The music of the flute had moreover been introduced into 
Boeotia at a very early period; the Copaic lake produced excellent 
reeds for flutes, and the worship of Dionysus, which was supposed to 
have originated at Thebes, required the varied and loud music of the 
flute. Accordingly the Boeotians were early celebrated for their skill 
in flute-playing ; whilst at Athens the music of the flute did not become 
common till after the Persian war, when the desire for novelty in art 
had greatly increased f. 

§ 2. But Pindar very early in his life soared far beyond the sphere 
of a flute-player at festivals, or even a lyric poet of merely local cele- 
brity. He placed himself under the tuition of Lasus of Hermione, a 
distinguished poet, already mentioned, but probably better versed in the 
theory than the practice of poetry and music. Since Pindar made 
these arts the whole business of his life J, and was nothing but a poet 
and a musician, he soon extended the boundaries of his art to the 
whole Greek nation, and composed poems of the choral lyric kind for 
persons in all parts of Greece. At the age of twenty he composed a 
song of victory in honour of a Thessalian youth belonging to the gens 
of the Aleuads§. We find him employed soon afterwards for the Sici- 
lian rulers, Hiero of Syracuse, and Thero of Agrigentum ; for Arcesi- 
laus, king of Cyrene, and Amyntas, king of Macedonia, as well as for 
the free cities of Greece. He made no distinction according to the race 
of the persons whom he celebrated : he was honoured and loved by the 
Ionian states, for himself as well as for his art ; the Athenians made 
him their public guest (Trpofcvos) ; and the inhabitants of Ceos em- 
ployed him to compose a processional song (7rpocr6c:iov), although they 
had their own poets, Simonides and Bacchylides. Pindar, however, 
was not a common mercenary poet, always ready to sing the praises of 
liim whose bread he ate. He received indeed money and presents for 
his poems, according to the general usage previously introduced by 
Simonides ; yet his poems are the genuine expression of his thoughts 
and feelings. In his praises of virtue and good fortune, the colours 
which he employs are not too vivid; nor does he avoid the darker 
shades of his subject ; he often suggests topics of consolation for past 
and present evil, and sometimes warns and exhorts to avoid future ca- 
lamity. Thus he ventures to speak freely to the powerful Hiero, whose 
many great and noble qualities were alloyed by insatiable cupidity and 

* Marm. Par. ep. 10. f Aristot. Polit. viii. 7. 

% Like Sappho, he is called povtovoios. 

§ Pyth. X. composed in Olymp. 69. 3. b. c. 502. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE* 219 

ambition, which his courtiers well knew how to turn to a bad account. 
Pindar exhorts him to tranquillity and contentedness of mind, to calm 
cheerfulness, and to clemency, saying to him * : " Be as thou knowest 
how to be ; the ape in the boy's story is indeed fair, very fair ; but 
Rhadamanthus was happy because he plucked the genuine fruits of 
the mind, and did not take delight in the delusions which follow the 
arts of the whisperer. The venom of calumny is an evil hard to be 
avoided, whether by him who hears or by him who is the object of it ; 
for the ways of calumniators are like those of foxes." Pindar speaks in 
the same free and manly tone to Arcesilaus IV., king of Cyrene, who 
afterwards brought on the ruin of his dynasty by his tyrannical severity, 
and who at that time kept Damophilus, one of the noblest of the Cyre- 
neans, in unjust banishment. " Now understand the enigmatic wisdom 
of GEdipus. If any one lops with a sharp axe the branches of a large 
oak, and spoils her stately form, she loses indeed her verdure, but she 
gives proof of her strength, when she is consumed in the winter fire, 
or when, torn from her place in the forest, she performs the melancholy 
office of a pillar in the palace of a foreign prince f- Thy office is to be 
the physician of the country : Paean honours thee ; therefore thou must 
treat with a gentle hand its festering wounds. It is easy for a fool to 
shake the stability of a city; but it is hard to place it "again on its 
foundations, unless a god direct the rulers. Gratitude for these good 
deeds is already in store for thee. Deign therefore to bestow all thy 
care upon the wealthy Cyrene }." 

Thus .lofty and dignified was the position which" Pindar assumed 
with regard to these princes ; and he remained true to the principle 
which he so frequently proclaims, that frankness and sincerity are 
always laudable. But his intercourse with the princes of his time appears 
to have been limited to poetry. We do not find him, like Simonides, 
the daily associate, counsellor, and friend of kings and statesmen; he 
plays no part in the public events of his time, either as a politician or 
a courtier. Neither was his name, like that of Simonides, distinguished 
in the Persian war ; partly because his fellow-citizens, the Thebans, 
were, together with half of the '^Grecian nation, on the Persian side, 
whilst the spirit of independence and victory were with the other half. 
Nevertheless the lofty character of Pindar's muse rises superior to 
these unfavourable circumstances. He did not indeed make the vain 
attempt of gaining over the Thebans to the cause of Greece ; but he 
sought to appease the internal dissensions which threatened to destroy 

* Pyth. II. 72. (131.) This ode was composed by Pindar at Thebes, but doubt- 
less not till after he had contracted a personal acquaintance with Hiero. 

| In this allegory, the oak is the state of Cyrene ; the branches are the banished 
nobles ; the winter fire is insurrection ; the foreign palace is a foreign conquering 
power, especially Persia. 

+ Pyth. IV. 



220 HISTORY OF THE 

Thebes during" the war, by admonishing his fellow citizens to union and 
concord*: and after the war was ended, he openly proclaims, in odes 
intended for the iEginetans and Athenians, his admiration of the 
heroism of the victors. In an ode, composed a few months after the 
surrender of Thebes to the allied army of the Greeks t (the seventh 
Isthmian), his feeling's appear to be deeply moved by the misfortunes 
of his native city ; but he returns to the cultivation of poetry as the 
Greeks were now delivered from their great peril, and a god had re- 
moved the stone of Tantalus from their heads. He expresses a hope 
that freedom will repair all misfortunes : and he turns with a friendly 
confidence to the city of iEgina, which, according to ancient legends, 
was closely allied with Thebes, and whose good offices with the Pelo- 
ponnesians might perhaps raise once more the humbled head of Bceotia. 

§ 3. Having mentioned nearly all that is known of the events of 
Pindar's life, and his relations to his contemporaries, we proceed to 
consider him more closely as a poet, and to examine the character 
and form of his poetical productions. 

The only class of poems which enable us to judge of Pindar's general 
style are the epinikia or triumphal odes. Pindar, indeed, excelled in 
all the known varieties of choral poetry ; viz. hymns to the gods, paeans 
and dithyrambs appropriate to the worship of particular divinities, odes 
for processions (7rpoo-daa), songs of maidens (TrapfeVeia), mimic dancing 
songs (i/7ropxV ara )> drinking songs (oxoXia), dirges (dpijvoi), and en- 
comiastic odes to princes (ey/v-w/Lna), which last approached most nearly 
to the epinikia. The poems of Pindar in these various styles were 
nearly as renowned among the ancients as the triumphal odes ; which 
is proved by the numerous quotations of them. Horace too, in enu- 
merating the different styles of Pindar's poetry, puts the dithyrambs 
first, then the hymns, and afterwards the epinikia^and the threnes. 
Nevertheless, there must have been some decided superiority in the 
epinikia, which caused them to be more frequently transcribed in the 
later period of antiquity, and thus rescued them from perishing with 
the rest of the Greek lyric poetry. At any rate, these odes, from the 
vast variety of their subjects and style, and their refined and elaborate 
structure, — some approaching to hymns and pseans, others to scolia 
and hyporchemes, — serve to indemnify us for the loss of the other sorts 
of lyric poetry. 

We will now explain, as precisely as possible, the occasion of an epi- 
nikian ode, and the mode of its execution. A victory has been gained 
in a contest at a festival, particularly at one of the four great games 
most prized by the Greek people |, either by the speed of horses, the 

* Polyb. iv. 31. 5. Fr. incert. 125. ed. Boeckh. 
f In the winter of Olymp. 75. 2. b. c. 479. 

% Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia. Some, of the epinikia, however, belong to 
other games. For example, the second Pythian is not a Pythian ode, but probably 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE.' 221 

strength and dexterity of the human body, or by skill in music *. Such 
a victory as this, which shed a lustre not only on the victor himself, 
but on his family, and even on his native city, demanded a solemn ce- 
lebration. This celebration might be performed by the victor's friends 
upon the spot where the victory was gained ; as, for example, at Olym- 
pia, when in the evening after the termination of the contests, by the 
light of the moon, the whole sanctuary resounded with joyful songs 
after the manner of encomia t. Or it might be deferred till after the 
victor's solemn return to his native city, where it was sometimes repeated, 
in following years, in commemoration of his success J. A celebration 
of this kind always had a religious character ; it often began with a 
procession to an altar or temple, in the place of the games or in the 
native city ; a sacrifice, followed by a banquet, was then offered at the 
temple, or in the house of the victor; and the whole solemnity con- 
cluded with the merry and boisterous revel called by the Greeks ku>^ioq. 
At this sacred, and at the same time joyous, solemnity, (a mingled cha- 
racter frequent among the Greeks,) appeared the chorus, trained by the 
poet, or some other skilled person §, for the purpose of reciting the 
triumphal hymn, which was considered the fairest ornament of the fes- 
tival. It was during either the procession or the banquet that the 
hymn was recited ; as it was not properly a religious hymn, which could 
be combined with the sacrifice. The form of the poem must, to a cer- 
tain extent, have been determined by the occasion on which it was to be 
recited. From expressions which occur in several epinikian odes, it is 
probable that all odes consisting of strophes without epodes || were sung 
during a procession to a temple or to the house of the victor ; although 
there are others which contain expressions denoting movement, and 
which yet have epodes %, It is possible that the epodes in the latter 
odes may have been sung at certain intervals when the procession was 

belongs to games of Iolaus at Thebes. The ninth Nemean celebrates a victory in 
the Pythia at Sicyon, (not at Delphi ;) the tenth Nemean celebrates a victory in the 
Hecatombrea at Argos ; the eleventh Nemean is not an epinikion, but was sung at 
the installation of a prytanis at Tenedos. Probably the Nemean odes were placed 
at the end of the collection, after the Isthmian ; so that a miscellaneous supplement 
could be appended to them. 

* For example, Pyth. XII., which celebrates the victory of Midas, a flute-player 
of Agrigentum. 

f Pindar's words in Olymp. XI. 76. (93), where this usage is transferred to the 
mythical establishment of the Olympia by Hercules. The 4th and 8th Olympian, 
the 6th, and probably also the 7th Pythian, were sung at the place of the games. 

I The 9th Olympian, the 3d Nemean, and the 2nd Isthmian, were produced at a 
memorial celebration of this kind. 

§ Such as ^Eneas the Stymphalian in Olymp. VI. 88. (150), whom Pindar calls 
"a just messenger, a scytala of the fair-haired Muses, a sweet goblet of loud-sounding 
songs," because he was to receive the ode from Pindar in person, to carry it to Stym- 
phalus, and there to instruct a chorus in the dancing, music, and text. 

|| Oi. XIV. Pyth. VI. XII. Nem. II. IV. IX. Isthm. VII. 

^[ 01. VIII. XIII. The expression rovh ku^ov %<%xi doubtless means, " Receive this 
band of persons who have combined for a sacrificial meal and feast." Hence too it 
appears that the band went into the temple. 



222 HISTORY OP THE 

not advancing-; for an epode, according to the statements of the an- 
cients, always required that the chorus should be at rest. But by far 
the greater number of the odes of Pindar were sung at the Comus, at 
the jovial termination of the feast : and hence Pindar himself more fre- 
quently names his odes from the Comus than from the victory *. 

§ 4. The occasion of an epinikian ode, — a victory in the sacred 
games, — and its end, — the ennobling of a solemnity connected with the 
worship of the gods, — required that it should be composed in a lofty and 
dignified style. But, on the other hand, the boisterous mirth of the 
feast did not admit the severity of the antique poetical style, like that 
of the hymns and nomes ; it demanded a free and lively expression of 
feeling, in harmony with the occasion of the festival, and suggesting the 
noblest ideas connected with the victor. Pindar, however, gives no 
detailed description of the victory, as this would have been only a re- 
petition of the spectacle which had already been beheld with enthusi- 
asm by the assembled Greeks at Olympia or Pytho ; nay, he often 
bestows only a few words on the victory, recording its place and the sort 
of contest in which it was won f. Nevertheless he does not (as many 
writers have supposed) treat the victory as a merely secondary object ; 
which he despatches quickly, in order to pass on to subjects of greater 
interest. The victory, in truth, is always the point upon which the 
whole of the ode turns; only he regards it, not simply as an incident, 
but as connected with the whole life of the victor. Pindar establishes 
this connexion by forming a high conception of the fortunes and cha- 
racter of the victor, and by representing the victory as the result of 
them. And as the Greeks were less accustomed to consider a man in 
his individual capacity, than as a member of his state, and his family ; 
so Pindar considers the renown of the victor in connexion with the past 
and present condition of the race and state to which he belongs. Now 
there are two different points from which the poet might view the life 
of the victor ; viz. destiny or merit \ ; in other words, he might celebrate 
his good fortune or his skill. In the victory with horses, external ad- 
vantages were the chief consideration ; inasmuch as it required excellent 
horses and an excellent driver, both of which were attainable only by 
the rich. The skill of the victor was more conspicuous in gymnastic 
feats, although even in these, good luck and the favour of the gods 
might be considered as the main causes of success ; especially as it was 
a favourite opinion of Pindar's, that all excellence is a gift of nature §. 

* \7rtxupw; uftvos, lyx.ufji.iov pi\o;. The 'grammarians, however, distinguish the 
encomia, as being laudatory poems strictly so called, from the epinikia. 

f On the other hand, we often find a precise enumeration of all the victories, not 
only of the actual victor, hut of his entire family : this must evidently have been re- 
quired of the poet. 

X okfios and kgir^i. 

§ to Ti <pvZ n^artffvov «V«v, 01. IX. 100 (151), which ode is a development of this 
general idea. Compare above, ch. xv. near the end. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 223 

The good fortune or skill of the victor could not however be treated 
abstractedly ; but must be individualized by a description of his peculiar 
lot. This individual colouring might be given by representing the good 
fortune of the victor as a compensation for past ill fortune ; or, gene- 
rally, by describing the alternations of fortune in his lot and in that of his 
family *. Another theme for an ode might be, that success in gymnas- 
tic contests was obtained by a family in alternate generations ; that is, 
by the grandfathers and grandsons, but not by the intermediate gene- 
ration f- If, however, the good fortune of the victor had been inva- 
riable, congratulation at such rare happiness was accompanied with 
moral reflections, especially on the right manner of estimating or en- 
during good fortune, or on the best mode of turning it to account. Ac- 
cording to the notions of the Greeks, an extraordinary share of the gifts 
of fortune suggested a dread of the Nemesis which delighted in humbling 
the pride of man ; and hence the warning to be. prudent, and not to 
strive after further victories J. The admonitions which Pindar addresses 
to Hiero are to cultivate a calm serenity of mind, after the cares and 
toils by which he had founded and extended his empire, and to purify 
and ennoble by poetry a spirit which had been ruffled by unworthy pas- 
sions. Even when the skill of the victor is put in the foreground, Pindar 
in general does not content himself with celebrating this bodily prowess 
alone, buGie usually adds some moral virtue which the victor has shown, 
or which he recommends and extols. This virtue is sometimes modera- 
tion, sometimes wisdom, sometimes filial love, sometimes piety to the gods. 
The latter is frequently represented as the main cause of the victory : 
the victor having thereby obtained the protection of the deities who 
preside over gymnastic contests ; as Hermes, or the Dioscuri. It is 
evident that, with Pindar, this mode of accounting for success in the 
games was not the mere fiction of a poet ; he sincerely thought that he 
had found the true cause, when he had traced the victory to the favour 
of a god who took an especial interest in the family of the victor, and at 
the same time presided over the games §. Generally, indeed, in extoll- 
ing both the skill and fortune of the victor, Pindar appears to adhere to 
the truth as faithfully as he declares himself to do; nor is he ever be- 
trayed into a high flown style of panegyric. A republican dread of in- 
curring the censure of his fellow citizens, as well as an awe of the divine 
Nemesis, induced him to moderate his praises, and to keep in view the 
instability of human fortune and the narrow limits of human strength. 

Thus far the poet seems to wear the character of a sage who ex- 
pounds to the victor his destiny, by showing him the dependence of his 

* 01. II. Also Isthm. III. f Nem. VI. 

J (Mi*'wt 'pra.Trrxivt vogffiov. 

§ As, e.g. 01. VI. 77. (130). sqq. In the above remarks I have chiefly followed 
Dissen's Dissertation De Ratione poetica Carmimun Pindaricornm, in his edition of 
Pindar, sect. i. p. xi. 



224 HISTORY OF THE 

exploit upon a higher order of things. Nevertheless, it is not to be 
supposed that the poet placed himself on an eminence remote from 
ordinary life, and that he spoke like a priest to the people, unmoved by 
personal feelings. The Epinikia of Pindar, although they were de- 
livered by a chorus, were, nevertheless, the expression of his individual 
feelings and opinions *, and are full of allusions to his personal relations 
to the victor. Sometimes, indeed, when his relations of this kind were 
peculiarly interesting to him, he made them the main subject of the ode ; 
several of his odes, and some among the most difficult, are to be explained 
in this manner. In one of his odes t, Pindar justifies the sincerity of 
his poetry against the charges which had been brought against it ; and 
represents his muse as a just and impartial dispenser of fame, as well 
among the victors at the games, as among the heroes of antiquity. In 
another J, he reminds the victor that he had predicted the victory to him 
in the public games, and had encouraged him to become a competitor 
for it § ; and he extols him for having employed his wealth for so noble 
an object. In another, he excuses himself for having delayed the com- 
position of an ode which he had promised to a wrestler, among the 
youths, until the victor had attained his manhood; and, as if to incite 
himself to the fulfilment of hisj promise, he points out the hallowed 
antiquity of these triumphal hymns, connecting their origin with the 
first establishment of the Olympic games ||, 

§ 5. Whatever might be the theme of one of Pindar's epinikian odes, 
it would naturally not be developed with the systematic completeness of 
a philosophical treatise. Pindar, however, has undoubtedly much of 
that sententious wisdom which began to show itself among the Greeks 
at the time of the Seven Wise Men, and which formed an important 
element of elegiac and choral lyric poetry before the time of Pindar. 
The apophthegms of Pindar sometimes assume the form of general 
maxims, sometimes of direct admonitions to the victor. At other times, 
when he wishes to impress some principle of morals or prudence upon 
the victor, he gives it in the form of an opinion entertained by himself: 
" I like not to keep much riches hoarded in an inner room ; but I like 
to live well by my possessions, and to procure myself a good name by 
making large gifts to my friends %." 

The other element of Pindar's poetry, his mythical narratives, occu- 
pies, however, far more space in most of his odes. That these are not 
mere digressions for the sake of ornament has been completely proved 
by modern commentators. At the same time, he would sometimes 

* See above, ch. xiv. § 2. f Nem. VII. 

J Nem. I. 

6 I refer to this the sentiment in v. 27 (40) ; " The mind showed itself in the 
counsels of those persons to whom nature has given the power of foreseeing the 
future;" and also the account of the prophecy of Tiresias, when the serpents were 
killed by the young Hercules. 

II 01. XI. f Nem. I. 31 (,45). 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 225 

seem to wish it to be believed that he had been carried away by his 
poetical fervour, when he returns to his theme from a long mythical nar- 
ration, or when he annexes a mythical story to a proverbial Baying ; as, 
for example, when he subjoins to the figurative expression, " Neither 
by sea nor by land canst thou find the way to the Hyperboreans," the his- 
tory of Perseus' visit to that fabulous people*. But even in such cases 
as these, it will be found, on close examination, that the fable belongs 
to the subject. Indeed, itvinay be observed generally of those Greek 
writers who aimed at the production of works of art, whether in prose 
or in poetry, that they often conceal their real purpose ; and affect to 
leave in vague uncertainty that which had been composed studiously 
and on a preconceived plan. Thus Plato often seems to allow the 
dialogue to deviate into a wrong course, when this very course was 
required by the plan of the investigation. In other passages, Pindar 
himself remarks that intelligence and reflection are required to discover 
the hidden meaning of his mythical episodes. Thus, after a description 
of the Islands of the Blessed, and the heroes who dwell there, he says, 
" I have many swift arrows in my quiver, which speak to the wise, but 
need an interpreter for the multitudef." Again, after the story of Ixion, 
which he relates in an ode to Hiero, he continues — " I must, however, 
have a care lest I fall into the biting violence of the evil speakers ; for, 
though distant in time, I have seen that the slanderous Archilochus, who 
fed upon loud-tongued wrath, passed the greater part of his life in 
difficulties and distress^." It is not easy to understand in this passage 
what moves the poet to express so much anxiety; until we advert to 
the lessons which the history of Ixion contains for the rapacious Hiero. 
The reference of these mythical narratives to the main theme of the 
ode may be either historical or ideal. In the first case, the mythical 
personages alluded to are the heroes at the head of the family or state 
to which the victor belongs, or the founders of the games in which he 
has conquered. Among the many odes of Pindar to victors from 
i*Egina, there is none in which he does not extol the heroic race of the 
iEacids. " It is," he says, '.' to me an invariable law, when I turn 
towards this island, to scatter praise upon you, O TEacids, masters of 
golden chariots §." In the second case, events of the heroic age are 
described, which resemble the events of the victor's life, or which con- 
tain lessons and admonitions for him to reflect upon. Thus two 
mythical personages may be introduced, of whom one may typify 
the victor in his praiseworthy, the other in his blameable acts ; so that 
the one example may serve to deter, the other to encourage||. In 
general, Pindar contrives to unite both these modes of allusion, by repre- 
senting the national or family heroes as allied in character and spirit to 

* Pyth. X.29.(4G.) f 01.11.83.(150.) 

+ Pyth. II. 5 A. (99.) § Isthm. V. [VI.J 19. (07.) 

|| As Pelons and Tantalus, 01. I. 



226 HISTORY OF THE 

the victor. Their extraordinary strength and felicity are continued in 
their descendants; the same mixture of good and evil destiny*, and 
even the same faultst, recur in their posterity. It is to be observed 
that, in Pindar's time, the faith of the Greeks in the connexion of the 
heroes of antiquity with passing- events was unshaken. L^fhe origin of 
historical events was sought in a remote age ; conquests and settlements 
in barbarian countries were justified by corresponding enterprises of 
heroes ; the Persian war was looked upon as an act of the same great 
drama, of which the expedition of the Argonauts and the Trojan war 
formed the earlier parts. At the same time, the mythical past was 
considered as invested with a splendour and sublimity of which even a 
faint reflection was sufficient to embellish the present. This is the 
cause of the historical and political allusions of the Greek tragedy, par- 
ticularly in iEschylus. Even the history of Herodotus rests on the 
same foundation ; but it is seen most distinctly in the copious mytho- 
logy which Pindar has pressed into the service of his lyric poetry. The 
manner in which mythical subjects were treated by the lyric poets was 
of course different from that in which they had been treated by the epic 
poets. In epic poetry, the mythical narrative is interesting in itself, 
and all parts of it are developed with equal fulness. In lyric poetry, it 
serves to exemplify some particular idea, which is usually stated in the 
middle or at the end of the ode ; and those points only of the story are 
brought into relief, which serve to illustrate this idea. Accordingly, 
the longest mythical narrative in Pindar (viz., the description of the 
voyage of the Argonauts, in the Pythian ode to Arcesilaus, king of 
Cyrene, which is continued through twenty-five strophes) falls far 
short of the sustained diffuseness of the epos. Consistently with the 
purpose of the ode, it is intended to set forth the descent of the kings of 
Cyrene from the Argonauts, and the poet only dwells on the relation of 
Jason with Pelias — of the noble exile with the jealous tyrant — because 
it contains a serious admonition to Arcesilaus in his above-mentioned 
relation with Damophilus. 

§ 6. The mixture of apophthegmatic maxims and typical narratives 
would alone render it difficult to follow the thread of Pindar's meaning; 
but, in addition to this cause of obscurity, the entire plan of his poetry 
is so intricate, that a modern reader often fails to understand the con- 
nexion of the parts, even where he thinks he has found a clue. Pindar 
begins an ode full of the lofty conception which he has formed of the 
glorious destiny of the victor ; and he seems, as it were, carried away 
by the flood of images which this conception pours forth. He does 
not attempt to express directly the general idea, but follows the train of 
thought which it suggests into its details, though without losing sight 
of their reference to the main object. Accordingly, when he has pur- 

* As the fate of the ancient Cadmeans in Theron, 01. II. 

f As the errors («/t*rX«*/«/) of the Rhodian heroes in Diagoras, 01, VII. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 227 

sued a train of thought, either in an apophthegm atic or mythical form, 
up to a certain point, he breaks off, before he has gone far enough to 
make the application to the victor sufficiently clear ; he then takes up 
another thread, which is perhaps soon dropped for a fresh one ; and at 
the end of the ode he gathers up all these different threads, and weaves 
them together into one web, in which the general idea predominates. 
By reserving the explanation of his allusions until the end, Pindar con- 
trives that his odes should consist of parts which are not complete or 
intelligible in themselves ; and thus the curiosity of the reader is kept 
on the stretch throughout the entire ode. Thus, for example, the ode 
upon the Pythian victory, which was gained by Hiero, as a citizen of 
iEtna, a city founded by himself*, proceeds upon a general idea of the 
repose and serenity of mind which Hiero at last enjoys, after a labo- 
rious public life, and to which Pindar strives to contribute by the 
influence of music and poetry. Full of this idea, Pindar begins by 
describing the effects of music upon the gods in Olympus, how it 
delights, inspires, and soothes them, although it increases the anguish 
of Typhos, the enemy of the gods, who lies bound under iEtna. Thence, 
by a sudden transition, he passes to the new town of iEtna, under the 
mountain of the name ; extols the happy auspices under which it was 
founded ; and lauds Hiero for his great deeds in war, and for the wise 
constitution he has given to the new state ; to which Pindar wishes 
exemption from foreign enemies and internal discord. Thus far it does 
not appear how the praises of music are connected with the exploits of 
Hiero as a warrior and a statesman. But the connexion becomes 
evident when Pindar addresses to Hiero a series of moral sentences, the 
object of which is to advise him to subdue all unworthy passions, to 
refresh his mind with the contemplation of art, and thus to obtain from 
the poets a good name, which will descend to posterity. 

§ 7. The characteristics of Pindar's poetry, which have been just 
explained, may be discerned in all his epinikian odes. Their agree- 
ment, however, in this respect is quite consistent with the extraordinary 
variety of style and expression which has been already stated to belong 
to this class of poems. Every epinikian ode of Pindar has its peculiar 
tone, depending upon the course of the ideas and the consequent choice 
of the expressions. The principal differences are connected with the 
choice of the rhythms, which a£ain is regulated by the musical style. 
According to the last distinction, the epinikia of Pindar are of three 
sorts, Doric, iEolic, and Lydian ; which can be easily distinguished, 
although each admits of innumerable varieties. In respect of metre, 
every ode of Pindar has an individual character ; no two odes having 
the same metrical structure. In the Doric ode the same metrical forms 
occur as those which prevailed in the choral lyric poetry of Stesichorus, 

* Pyth. I. 

Q2 



223 HISTORY OP THE 

viz., systems of dactyls and trochaic dipodies*, which most nearly 
approach the stateliness of the hexameter. Accordingly, a serene dig- 
nity pervades these odes ; the mythical narrations are developed with 
greater fulness, and the ideas are limited to the subject, and are free 
from personal feeling; in short, their general character is that of calm- 
ness and elevation. The language is epic, with a slight Doric tinge, 
which adds to its brilliancy and dignity. The rhythms of the iEolic 
odes resemble those of the Lesbian poetry, in which light dactylic, tro- 
chaic, or logaoedic metres prevailed; these rhythms, however, when 
applied to choral lyric poetry, were rendered far more various, and thus 
often acquired a character of greater volubility and liveliness. The 
poet's mind also moves with greater rapidity ; and sometimes he stops 
himself in the midst of narrations which seem to him impious or arro- 
gant t. A larger scope is likewise given to his personal feelings; and in 
the addresses to the victor there is a gayer tone, which at times even 
takes a jocular turn J. The poet introduces his relations to the victor, 
and to his poetical rivals ; he extols his own style, and decries that of 
others §. The iEolic odes, from the rapidity and variety of their move- 
ment, have a less uniform character than the Doric odes ; for example, 
the first Olympic, with its joyous and glowing images, is very different 
from the second, in which a lofty melancholy is expressed, and from the 
ninth, which has an expression of proud and complacent self-reliance. 
The language of the JEolic epinikia is also bolder, more difficult in its 
syntax, and marked by rarer dialectical forms. Lastly, there are the 
Lydian odes, the number of which is inconsiderable ; their metre is 
mostly trochaic, and of a particularly soft character, agreeing with the 
tone of the poetry. Pindar appears to have preferred the Lydian 
rhythms for odes which were destined to be sung during a procession to 
a temple or at the altar, and in which the favour of the deity was im- 
plored in a humble spirit. 

* The ancient writers on music explain how those trochaic dipodies were reduced 
to an uniform rhythm with the dactylic series. These writers state that the trochaic 
dipody was considered as a rhythmical foot, having the entire first trochee as its 
arsis, the second as its thesis ; so that, if the syllables were measured shortly, it 
might be taken as equivalent to a dactyl. 

t 01. I. 52. (82.) IX. 35. 

X 01. IV. 26. (40.) Pyth. II. 72. (131.) 

§ 01. II. 80. (155.) IX. 100. (151.) Pyth. II. 79. (145.) 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 229 



CHAPTER XVI. 

§ 1. Moral improvement of Greek poetry after Homer especially evident in the 
notions as to the state of man after death. § 2. Influence of the mysteries and 
of the Orphic doctrines on these notions. § 3. First traces of Orphic ideas in 
Hesiod and other epic poets. § 4. Sacerdotal enthusiasts in the age of the Seven 
Sages; Epimenides, Abaris, Aristeas, and Pherecydes. §5. An Orphic litera- 
ture arises after the destruction of the Pythagorean league. § 6. Subjects of 
the Orphic poetry ; at first cosmogonic, § 7, afterwards prophetic, in reference to 
Dionysus. 

§ 1. We have now traced the progress of Greek poetry from Homer to 
Pindar, and observed it through its different stages, from the simple 
epic song to the artificial and elaborate form of the choral ode. Fortu- 
nately the works of Homer and Pindar, the two extreme points of this 
long series, have been preserved nearly entire. Of the intermediate 
stages we can only form an imperfect judgment from isolated frag- 
ments and the statements of later writers. 

The interval between Homer and Pindar is an important period in 
the history of Greek civilization. Its advance was so great in this 
time that the latter poet may seem to belong to a different state of the 
human race from the former. In Homer we perceive that infancy of 
the mind which lives entirely in seeing and imagining, whose chief 
enjoyment consists in vivid conceptions of external acts and objects, 
without caring much for causes and effects, and whose moral judgments 
are determined rather by impulses of feeling than by distinctly-con- 
ceived rules of conduct. In Pindar the Greek mind appears far more 
serious and mature. Fondly as he may contemplate the images of 
beauty and splendour which he raises up, and glorious as are the forms 
of ancient heroes and modern athletes which he exhibits, yet the chief 
effort of his genius is to discover a standard of moral government ; and 
when he has distinctly conceived it, he applies it to the fair and living 
forms which the fancy of former times had created. There is too much 
truth in Pindar's poetry, it is too much the expression of his genuine 
feelings, for him to attempt to conceal its difference from the ancient 
style, as the later poets did. He says* that the fame of Ulysses has 
become greater through the sweet songs of Homer than from his real 
adventures, because there is something ennobling in the illusions and 
soaring flights of Homer's fancy ; and he frequently rejects the narra- 
tives of former poets, particularly when they do not accord with his own 
purer conceptions of the power and moral excellence of the godsf. 

But there is nothing in which Pindar differs so widely from Homer 
as in his notions respecting the state of rwn after death. According 

* Nem. vii. 20 (29). 

t See, for example, 01. i. 52 (82) ; ix. 35 (54), 



230 HISTORY OF THE 

to the description in the Odyssey, all the dead, even the most renowned 
heroes, lead a shadowy existence in the infernal regions (Aides), where, 
like phantoms, they continue the same pursuits as on earth, though 
without will or understanding. On the other hand, Pindar, in his 
sublime ode of consolation to Theron*, says that all misdeeds of this 
world are severely judged in the infernal regions, but that a happy 
life in eternal sunshine, without care for subsistence, is the portion 
of the good; " while those who, through a threefold existence in the 
upper and lower worlds, have kept their souls pure from all sin, 
ascend the path of Zeus to the citadel of Cronust, where the Islands 
of the Blessed are refreshed by the breezes of Ocean, and golden flowers 
glitter." In this passage the Islands of the Blessed are described as a 
reward for the highest virtue, whilst in Homer only a few favourites of 
the gods (Menelaus, for example, because his wife was a daughter of 
Zeus) reach the Elysian Field on the border of the ocean. In his 
threnes, or laments for the dead, Pindar more distinctly developed his 
ideas about immortality, and spoke of the tranquil life of the blessed, 
in perpetual sunshine, among fragrant groves, at festal games and 
sacrifices ; and of the torments of the wretched in eternal night. In 
these, too, he explained himself more fully as to the existence alter- 
nating between the upper and lower world, by which lofty spirits rise 
to a still higher state. He says J — " Those from whom Persephone 
receives an atonement for their former guilt, their souls she sends, in 
the ninth year, to the sun of heaven. From them spring great kings 
and men mighty in power and renowned for wisdom, whom posterity 
calls sacred heroes among men§." ■ 

§ 2. It is manifest that between the periods of Homer and Pindar 
a great change of opinions took place, which could not have been ef- 
fected at once, but must have been produced by the efforts of many 
sages and poets. All the Greek religious poetry treating of death and 
the world beyond the grave refers to the deities whose influence was 
supposed to be exercised in the dark region at the centre of the earth, 
and who were thought to have little connexion with the political and 
social relations of human life. These deities formed a class apart from 
the gods of Olympus, and were comprehended under the name of the 
Chthonian godsj. The mysteries of the Greeks were connected with 
the worship of these gods alone. That the love of immortality first 

* 01. ii. 57 (105). 

| That is, the way which Zeus himself takes when he visits his dethroned father 
Cronus (now reconciled with him, and become the ruler of the departed spirits in 
bliss), in order to advise with him on the destiny of mankind. 

+ Thren. fr. 4, ed. Boeckh. 

§ In order to understand this passage it is to be observed that, according to the 
ancient law, a person who had committed homicide must expiate his offence by an 
exile or even servitude of eight years before his guilt was removed. 

|] Concerning this distinction, the most important in the Greek religious system, 
see ch. ii. § 5. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 231 

found a support in a belief in these deities appears from the fable of 
Persephone, the daughter of Demeter. Every year, at the time of 
harvest, Persephone was supposed to be carried from the world above 
to the dark dominions of the invisible King of Shadows ('Atdi/c), but to 
return every spring, in youthful beauty, to the arms of her mother. It 
was thus that the ancient Greeks described the disappearance and 
return of vegetable life in the alternations of the seasons. The changes 
of nature, however, must have been considered as typifying the changes 
in the lot of man ; otherwise Persephone would have been merely a 
symbol of the seed committed to the ground, and would not have be- 
come the queen of the dead. But when the goddess of inanimate 
nature had become the queen of the dead, it was a natural analogy, 
which must have early suggested itself, that the return of Persephone 
to the world of light also denoted a renovation of life and a new birth 
to men. Hence the Mysteries of Demeter, and especially those cele- 
brated at Eleusis (which at an early period acquired great renown 
among all the Greeks), inspired the most elevating and animating 
hopes with regard to the condition of the soul after death. " Happy" 
(says Pindar of these mysteries)* " is he who has beheld them, and de- 
scends beneath the hollow earth; he knows the end, he knows the 
divine origin of life;" and this praise is repeated by all the most dis- 
tinguished writers of antiquity who mention the Eleusinian mysteries. 

But neither the Eleusinian nor any other of the established mysteries 
of Greece obtained any influence upon the literature of the nation, since 
the hymns sung and the prayers recited at them were only intended 
for particular parts of the imposing ceremony, and were not imparted 
to the public. On the other hand, there was a society of persons who 
performed the rites of a mystical worship, but were not exclusively 
attached to a particular temple and festival, and who did not confine 
their notions to the initiated, but published them to others, and com- 
mitted them to literary works. These were the followers of Orpheus 
(oi 'Op<j)iKoi) ; that is to say, associations of persons, who, under the 
guidance of the ancient mystical poet Orpheus, dedicated themselves 
to the worship of Bacchus, in which they hoped to find satisfaction for 
an ardent longing after the soothing and elevating influences of reli- 
gion. The Dionysus to whose worship these Orphic and Bacchic rites 
were annexedfj was the Chthonian deity, Dionysus Zagreus, closely 
connected with Demeter and Cora, who was the personified expression 
not only of the most rapturous pleasure, but also of a deep sorrow for 
the miseries of human life. The Orphic legends and poems related in 
great part to this Dionysus, who was combined, as an infernal deity, 
with Hades ; (a doctrine given by the philosopher Heraclitus as the 



f T« 'OgQixci KxXi'ofAivu, xet) BaK^txa. Herod, xi. 8] 



238 HISTORY OF THE 

opinion of n particular Feet* ;) and upon whom the Orphic theologers 
founded their hopes of the purification and ultimate immortality of the 
soul. But their mode of celebrating this worship was very different 
from the popular rites of Bacchus. The Orphic worshippers of Bac- 
chus did not indulge in unrestrained pleasure and frantic enthusiasm, 
but rather aimed at an ascetic purity of life and mannerst. The fol- 
lowers of Orpheus, when they had tasted the mystic sacrificial feast of 
raw flesh torn from the ox of Dionysus (w/zo^ay/a), partook of no other 
animal food. They wore white linen garments, like Oriental and Egyp- 
tian priests, from whom, as Herodotus remarks, much may have been 
borrowed in the ritual of the Orphic worship. 

§ 3. It is difficult to determine the time when the Orphic association 
was formed in Greece, and when hymns and other religious songs were 
first composed in the Orphic spirit. But, if we content ourselves with 
seeking to ascertain the beginning of higher and more hopeful views 
of death than those presented by Homer, we find them in the poetry 
of Hesicd. In Hesiod's Works and Days, at least, all the heroes are 
described as collected by Zeus in the Islands of the Blessed near the 
ocean ; according indeed to one verse (which, however, is not recog- 
nised by all critics), they are subject to the dominion of CronusJ. In 
this we may see the marks of a great change in opinion. It became re- 
pugnant to men's feelings to conceive divine beings, like the gods of 
Olympus and the Titans, in a state of eternal dissension; the former 
selfishly enjoying undisturbed felicity, and the latter abandoned to all 
the horrors of Tartarus. A humaner spirit required a reign of peace 
after the rupture of the divine dynasties. Hence the belief, entertained 
by Pindar, that Zeus had released the Titans from their chains§ ; and 
that Cronus, the god of the golden age, reconciled with his son Zeus, 
still continued to reign, in the islands of the ocean, over the blessed 
of a former generation. In Orphic poems, Zeus calls on Cronus, re- 
leased from his chains, to assist him in laying the foundation of the 
world. There is also, in other epic poets after Homer, a similar ten- 
dency to lofty and tranquillizing notions. Eugammon, the author of 
the Telegonia||, is supposed to have borrowed the part of his poem 
which treated of Thesprotia, from Musaeus, the poet of the mysteries. 
Thesprotia was a country in which the worship of the gods of death 
was peculiarly cultivated. In the Alcmcuonis, which celebrated Alc- 
maeon, the son of Amphiaraus, Zagreus was invoked as the highest of 
all the gods^j. The deity meant in this passage was the god of the in- 

* Ap. Clem. Alex, Protr. p. 30, Potter. 

f On this aud other points mentioned in the text see Lobeck Aglaophamu<=, p. 244. 
\ According to V. 1G9 : tyiXov «cr' u6a.va.rav <ro7<riv K^ova; \y.p>a,tri\ivii, (concerning 
this reading see Goettlir.g's edition ;) which verse is wanting in some manuscripts. 

Z=t/j l/.vtn Tirava;. 

See above, ch. vi. § G. 
% Tlorvia T?i, Zuy^iv n hm <7ra.W7ri(>Ttx.Ti <ra.vrm. Etym. Gud. in V. Zxy^ive. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 233 

fernal regions, but in a much more elevated sense than that in which 
Hades is usually employed. Another poem of this period, the Minyas, 
gave an ample description of the infernal regions ; the spirit of which 
may be inferred from the fact that this part (which was called by the 
name of "The Descent to Hades") is attributed, among other authors, 
to Cecrops, an Orphic poet, or even to Orpheus himself*. 

$ 4. At the time when the first philosophers appeared in Greece, 
poems must have existed which diffused, in mythical forms, conceptions 
of the origin of the world and the destiny of the soul, differing from 
those in Homer. The endeavour to attain to a knowledge of divine 
and human things was in Greece slowly and with difficulty evolved 
from the religious notions of a sacerdotal fanaticism ; and it was for a 
long period confined to the refining and rationalizing of the traditional 
mythology, before it ventured to explore the paths of independent 
inquiry. In the age of the seven sages several persons appeared, 
who, (being mainly under the influence of the ideas and rites of the 
worship of Apollo,) partly by a pure and holy mode of life, and partly 
by a fanatical temper of mind, surrounded themselves with a sort of 
supernatural halo, which makes it difficult for us to discern their true 
character. Among these persons was Epimenides of Crete, an early 
contemporary of Solon, who was sent for to Athens, in his character of 
expiatory priest, to free it from the curse which had rested upon it 
since the Cylonian massacre (about Olymo. 4:2. B.C. 612). Epime- 
nides was a man of a sacred and marvellous nature, who was brought 
up by the nymphs, and whose soul quitted his body, as long and as 
often as it pleased ; according to the opinion of Plato and other ancients, 
his mind had a prophetic and inspired sense of divine thingsf. An- 
other and more extraordinary individual of this class was Abaris, who, 
about a generation later, appeared in Greece as an expiatory priest, 
with rites of purification and holy songs. In order to give more im- 
portance to his mission, he called himself a Hyperborean ; that is, one 
of the nation which Apollo most loved, and in which he manifested 
himself in person ; and, as a proof of his origin, he carried with him an 
arrow which Apollo had given him in the country of the Hyperboreans}. 
Together with Abaris may be mentioned Aristeas of Proconnesus, on 
the Propontis ; who took the opposite direction, and, inspired by Apollo, 

* h I; A'ldiv xurciZairt;. 

f Whether the oracles, expiatory verses, and poems (as the origin of the Curctcs 
and Coryhantes) attributed to him are his genuine productions cannot now he deter- 
mined. Damascius, De Princip. p. 383, ascribes to him (after Kodemus) a cosmo- 
gony, in which the mundane egg plays an important part, as in the Orphic cos- 
mogonies. 

t This is the ancient form of the story in Herod, iv. 36, the orator Lycurgus, &c. 
According to the later version, which is derived from Heraclides Ponticus, Abaris 
was himself carried by the marvellous arrow through the air round the world. Soma 
expiatory verses and oracles were likewbe escribed to Abaris ; also an epic poem, 
called "the Arrival of Apollo among the Hyperboreans." 



234 HISTORY OF THE 

travelled to the far north, in search of the Hyperboreans. He de- 
scribed this marvellous journey in a poem, called Arimaspea, which 
was read by Herodotus, and Greeks of still later date. It consisted of 
ethnographical accounts and stories about the northern nations, mixed 
with notions belonging to the worship of Apollo. In this poem, how- 
ever, Aristeas so far checked his imagination, that he only represented 
himself to have penetrated northwards from the Scythians as far as the 
Issedones ; and he gave as mere reports the marvellous tales of the one- 
eyed Arimaspians, of the griffins which guarded the gold, and of the 
happy Hyperboreans beyond the northern mountains. Aristeas be- 
came quite a marvellous personage : he is said to have accompanied 
Apollo, at the founding of Metapontum, in the form of a raven, and to 
have appeared centuries afterwards, (viz. when he really lived, about 
the time of Pythagoras,) in the same city of Magna Graecia. 

Pherecydes, of the island of Syros, one of the heads of the Ionic 
school, belongs to this class of the sacerdotal sages, inasmuch as he 
gave a mythical form to his notions about the nature of things and their 
internal principles. There are extant some fragments of a theogony 
composed by him, which bear a strange character, and have a much 
closer resemblance to the Orphic poems than to those of Hesiod*. 
They show that by this time the character of the theogonic poetry had 
been changed, and that Orphic ideas were in vogue. 

§ 5. No name of any literary production of an Orphic poet before 
Pherecydes is known ; probably because the hymns and religious songs 
composed by the Orphic poets of that time were destined only for 
their mystical assemblies, and were indissolubly connected with the 
rites performed at them. An extensive Orphic literature first appeared 
about the time of the Persian war, when the remains of the Pytha- 
gorean order in Magna Graecia united themselves to the Orphic asso- 
ciations. The philosophy of Pythagoras had in itself no analogy with 
the spirit of the Orphic mysteries ; nor did the life, education, and 
manners of the followers of Orpheus at all resemble those of the 
Pythagorean league in lower Italy. Among the Orphic theologers, 
the worship of Dionysus was the centre of all religious ideas, and the 
starting point of all speculations upon the world and human nature. 
The worship of Dionysus, however, appears not to have been held in 
honour in the cities of the Pythagorean league ; these philosophers 
preferred the worship of Apollo and the Muses, which best suited the 
spirit of their social and political institutions. This junction was 
evidently not formed till after the dissolution of the Pythagorean 
league in Magna Greecia, and the sanguinary persecution of its 

* Sturz de Pherecyde p. 40. sqq. The mixture of divine beings (hex^airia), the 
god Ophioneus, the unity of Zeus and Eros, and several other things in the Theo- 
gony uf Pherecydes also occur in Orphic poems. The Cosmogony of Acusilaus 
(Damascius, p. 313, after Eudemus), in which ^Ether, Eros, and Metis, are made 
the children of Erebos and Night, also has an Orphic colour. See below, § 6. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 235 

members, by the popular party (about Olymp. 69. 1. B.C. 504). It 
was natural that many Pythagoreans, having contracted a fondness for 
exclusive associations, should seek a refuge in these Orphic conven- 
ticles, sanctified, as they were, by religion. Several persons, who are 
called Pythagoreans, and who were known as the authors of Orphic 
poems, belong to this period ; as Cercops, Brontinus, and Arignote. 
To Cercops was attributed the great poem called the " Sacred Legends " 
(lepol Ao'yoi), a complete system of Orphic theology, in twenty-four 
rhapsodies ; probably the work of several persons, as a certain Diog- 
netus was also called the author of it. Brontinus, likewise a Pytha- 
gorean, was said to be the author of an Orphic poem upon nature 
(tyvaiKa), and of a poem called " The Mantle and the Net " (Tri-n-Xog 
kcli SUtvov), Orphic expressions symbolical of the creation. Arignote, 
who is called a pupil, and even a daughter, of Pythagoras, wrote a 
poem Called Bacchica. Other Orphic poets were Persinus of Miletus, 
Timocles of Syracuse, Zopyrus of Heraclea, or Tarentum. 

The Orphic poet of whom we know the most is Onomacritus, who, 
however, was not connected with the Pythagoreans, having lived with 
Pisistratus and the Pisistratids, and been held in high estimation by 
them, before the dissolution of the Pythagorean league. He collected 
the oracles of Musaeus for the Pisistratids ; in which work, the poet 
Lasus is said (according to Herodotus) to have detected him in a 
forgery. He also composed songs for Bacchic initiations ; in which 
he connected the Titans with the mythology of Dionysus, by de- 
scribing them as the intended murderers of the young god* ; which 
shows how far the Orphic mythology departed from the theogony of 
Hesiod. In the time of Plato, a considerable number of poems, under 
the names of Orpheus and Musaeus, had been composed by these per- 
sons, and were recited by rhapsodists at the public games, like the 
epics of Homer and Hesiod f. The Orpheotelests, likewise, an obscure 
set of mystagogues derived from the Orphic associations, used to come 
before the doors of the rich, and promise to release them from their 
own sins, and those of their forefathers, by sacrifices and expiatory 
songs ; and they produced at this ceremony a heap of books of Orpheus 
and Musaeus, upon which they founded their promises {. 

§ 6. In treating of the subjects of this early Orphic poetry, we may 
remark, first, that there is much difficulty in distinguishing it from 
Orphic productions of the decline of paganism ; and, secondly, that a 
detailed explanation of it would involve us in the mazes of ancient 
mythology and religion. We will, therefore, only mention the prin- 
cipal contents of these compositions ; which will suffice to give an idea 
of their spirit and character. We shall take them chiefly from the 
Orphic cosmogony, which later writers designate as the common one 

* This is the meaning of the important passage of Pausan. viii. 37. 3. 
f Plato, Ion. p. 536 B. J Plato, Rep. ii. p. 364. 



236 HISTORY OP THE 

(// (Tv)t)f)t)c), — for there were others still more wild and extravagant, — 
and which probably formed a part of the long- poetical collection of 
" Sacred Legends," which has been already mentioned. 

We see, at the very outset of the Orphic theogony, an attempt to 
refine upon the theogony of Hesiod, and to arrive at higher abstrac- 
tions than his chaos. The Orphic theogony placed Chronos, Time, at 
the head of all things, and conferred upon it life and creative power. 
Chronos was then described as spontaneously producing chaos and 
aether, and forming from chaos, within the aether, a mundane egg^ of 
brilliant white. The mundane egg is a notion which the Orphic poets 
had in common with many Oriental systems; traces of it also occur in 
ancient Greek legends, as in that of the Dioscuri; but the Orphic poets 
first developed it among the Greeks. The whole essence of the world 
was supposed to be contained in this egg, and to grow from it, like the 
life of a bird. The mundane egg, which included the matter of chaos, 
was impregnated by the winds, that is, by the aether in motion; and 
thence arose the golden-winged Eros*. The notion of Eros, as a 
cosmogonic being, is carried much further by the Orphic poets than by 
Hesiod. They also called him Metis, the mind of the world. The 
name of Phanes first became common in Orphic poetry of a later date. 
The Orphic pcets conceived this Eros-Phanes as a pantheistic being ; 
the parts of the world forming, as it were, the limbs of his body, and 
being thus united into an organic whole. The heaven was his head, 
the earth his foot, the sun and moon his eyes, the rising and setting 
of the heavenly bodies his horns. An Orphic poet addresses Phanes 
in the following poetical language : " Thy tears are the hapless race 
of men ; by thy laugh thou hast raised up the sacred race of the 
gods." Eros then gives birth to a long series of gods, similar to that 
in Hesiod. By his daughter, Night, he produces Heaven and Earth; 
these then bring forth the Titans, among whom Cronus and Rhea 
become the parents of Zeus. The Orphic poets, as well as Hesiod, 
made Zeus the supreme god at this period of the world. He was, 
therefore, supposed to supplant Eros-Phanes, and to unite this being 
with himself. Hence arose the fable of Zeus having swallowed 
Phanes ; which is evidently taken from the story in Hesiod, that Zeus 
swallowed Metis, the goddess of wisdom. Hesiod, however, merely 
meant to imply that Zeus knows all things that concern our weal or 
woe ; while the Orphic poets go further, and endow their Zeus with 
the anima mundi. Accordingly, they represent Zeus as now being the 
first and last; the beginning, middle, and end; man and woman; 
and, in fine, everything. Nevertheless, the universe was conceived to 

* This feature is also in the burlesque Orphic cosmogony in Aristoph. Av. 694; 
according to which the Orphic verse in Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iii. 26. should be thus 
understood : 

Avtkp 'i^uTo. xgo'ves (not Kf«vaj) y.a.) Tfjivpctru ndyra (in the nominative case) 

iTIK'JUlTiV. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 237 

stand iii different relations to Zeus and to Eros. The Orphic poets also 
described Zens as uniting the jarring elements into one harmonious 
structure ; and thus restoring, by his wisdom, the unity which existed 
in Phanes, but which had afterwards been destroyed, and replaced by 
confusion and strife. Here we meet with the idea of a creation, which 
was quite unknown to the most ancient Greek poets. While the 
Greeks of the time of Homer and Hesiod considered the world as an 
organic being, which was constantly growing into a state of greater 
perfection ; the Orphic poets conceived the world as having been formed 
by the Deity out of pre-existing matter, and upon a predetermined plan. 
Hence, in describing creation, they usually employed the image of a 
" crater," in which the different elements were supposed to be mixed 
in certain proportions ; and also of a " peplos," or garment, in which 
the different threads are united into one web. Hence " Crater," and 
" Peplos," occur as the titles of Orphic poems. 

§ 7. Another great difference between the notions of the Orphic 
poets and those of the early Greeks concerning the order of the world 
was, that the former did not limit their views to the present state of 
mankind ; still less did they acquiesce in Hesiod's melancholy doctrine 
of successive ages, each one worse than the preceding ; but they looked 
for a cessation of strife, a holy peace, a state of the highest happiness 
and beatitude of souls at the end of all things. Their firm hopes of 
this result were founded upon Dionysus, from the worship of whom 
all their peculiar religious ideas were derived. According to them, 
Dionysus-Zagreus was a son of Zeus, whom he had begotten, in the 
form of a dragon, upon his daughter Cora-Persephone, before she was 
carried off to the kingdom of shadows. The young god was supposed 
to pass through great perils. This was always an essential part of the 
mythology of Dionysus, especially as it was related in the neighbour- 
hood of Delphi ; but it was converted by the Orphic poets, and espe- 
cially by Onomacritus, into the marvellous legend which is preserved 
by later writers. According to this legend, Zeus destined Dionysus 
for king, set him upon the throne of heaven, and gave him Apollo and 
the Curetes to protect him. But the Titans, instigated by the jealous 
Here, attacked him by surprise, having disguised themselves under a 
coating of plaster (a rite of the Bacchic festivals), while Dionysus, 
whose attention was engaged with various playthings, particularly a 
splendid mirror, did not perceive their approach. After a long and 
fearful conflict the Titans overcame Dionysus, and tore him into seven 
pieces*, one piece for each of themselves. Pallas, however, succeeded 
in saving his palpitating heartf, which was swallowed by Zeus in a 
drink. As the ancients considered the heart as the seat of life, Diony- 
sus was again contained in Zeus, and again begotten by him. Zeus 

* The Orphic poets added Phorcys and Dione to the Titans and Titanides of Hesiod. 
f Kg«$,V TruMopimv, an etymological fable. 



238 HISTORY OP THE 

at the same time avenges the slaughter of his son by striking and con- 
suming the Titans with his thunderbolts. From their ashes, according 
to this Orphic legend, proceeded the race of men. This Dionysus, torn 
in pieces and born again, is destined to succeed Zeus in the government 
of the world, and to restore the golden age. In the same system Dio- 
nysus was also the god from whom the liberation of souls was expected; 
for, according to an Orphic notion, more than once alluded to by Plato, 
human souls are punished by being confined in the body, as in a prison. 
The sufferings of the soul in its prison, the steps and transitions by 
which it passes to a higher state of existence, and its gradual purifica- 
tion and enlightenment, were all fully described in these poems ; and 
Dionysus and Cora were represented as the deities who performed the 
task of guiding and purifying the souls of men. 

Thus, in the poetry of the first five centuries of Greek literature, 
especially at the close of this period, we find, instead of the calm enjoy- 
ment of outward nature which characterised the early epic poetry, a 
profound sense of the misery of human life and an ardent longing for 
a condition of greater happiness. This feeling, indeed, was not so 
extended as to become common to the whole Greek nation ; but it took 
deep root in individual minds, and was connected with more serious 
and spiritual views of human nature. 

We will now turn our attention to the progress made by the Greeks, 
in the last century of this period, in prose composition. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



§ 1. Opposition of philosophy and poetry among the Greeks ; causes of the intro- 
duction of prose writings. § 2. The Ionians give the main impulse ; tendency of 
philosophical speculation among the Ionians. § 3. Retrospect of the theological 
speculations of Pherecydes. § 4. Thales; he combines practical talents with 
bold ideas concerning the nature of things. § 5. Anaximander, a writer and 
inquirer on the nature of things. § 6. Anaximenes pursues the physical in- 
quiries of his predecessors. § 7. Heraclitus ; profound character of his natural 
philosophy. 6 8. Changes introduced by Anaxagoras ; new direction of the 
physical speculations of the Ionians. 5 9. Dionysius continues the early doctrine. 
Archelaus, an Anaxagoreau, carries the Ionic philosophy to Athens. § 10. Doc- 
trines of the Eleatics, founded by Xenophanes; their, enthusiastic character is 
expressed in a poetic form. §11. Parmenides gives a logical form to the doc- 
trines of Xenophanes ; plan of his poem. § 12. Further development of the 
Eleatic doctrine by Melissus and Zeno. § 13. Empedocles, akin to Anaxagoras 
and the Eleatics, but conceives lofty ideas of his own. § 14. Italic school; re- 
ceives its impulse from an Ionian, which is modified by the Doric character of 
the inhabitants. Coincidence of its practical tendency with its philosophical 
principle. 

§ 1. As the design of this work is to give a history, not of the philo- 
sophy, but of the literature of Greece, we shall limit ourselves to such a 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 239 

view of the early Greek philosophers as will illustrate the literary pro- 
gress of the Greek nation. Philosophy occupies a peculiar province of 
the human mind ; and it has its origin in habits of thought which are 
confined to a few. It is necessary not only to possess these habits of 
thought, but also to be singularly free from the shackles of any parti- 
cular system, in order fully to comprehend the speculations of the an- 
cient Greek philosophers, as preserved in the fragments and accounts 
of their writings. Even if a history of physical and metaphysical spe- 
culation among the early Greek philosophers were likely to interest the 
reader, yet it would be foreign to the object of the present work, which 
is intended to illustrate the intellectual progress and character of the 
entire Greek nation. Philosophy, for some time after its origin in 
Greece, was as far removed from the ordinary thoughts, occupations, 
and amusements of the people, as poetry was intimately connected with 
them. Poetry ennobles and elevates all that is most characteristic of a 
nation; its religion, mythology, political and social institutions, and 
manners. U Philosophy, on the other hand, begins by detaching the 
mind from the opinions and habits in which it has been bred up ; from 
the national conceptions of the gods and the universe ; and from the 
traditionary maxims of ethics and politics. The philosopher attempts 
as far as possible to think for himself; and hence he is led to disparage 
all that is handed down from antiquity. Hence, too, the Greek philo- 
sophers from the beginning renounced the ornaments of verse ; that is, 
of the vehicle which had previously been used for the expression of 
every elevated feeling. Philosophical writings were nearly the earliest 
compositions in the unadorned language of common life. It is not 
probable that they would have been composed in this form, if they had 
been intended for recital to a multitude assembled at games and festi- 
vals. It would have required great courage to break in upon the rhyth- 
mical flow of the euphonious hexameter and lyric measures, with a 
discourse uttered in the language of ordinary conversation. The most 
ancient writings of Greek philosophers were however only brief records 
of their principal doctrines, designed to be imparted to a few persons. 
There was no reason why the form of common speech should not be 
used for these, as it had been long before used for laws, treaties, and 
the like. In fact, prose composition and writing are so intimately con- 
nected, that we may venture to assert that, if writing had become com- 
mon among the Greeks at an earlier period, poetry would not have so 
long retained its ascendancy. We shall indeed find that philosophy, as 
it advanced, sought the aid of poetry, in order to strike the mind more 
forcibly. And if we had aimed at minute precision in the division of 
our subject, we should have passed from theological to philosophical 
poetry. But it is more convenient to observe, as far as possible, the 
chronological order of the different branches of literature, and the de- 
pendence of one upon another ; and we shall therefore classify this phi- 



240 HISTORY OP THE 

losophical poetry with prose compositions, as being a limited and pecu- 
liar deviation from the usual practice with regard to philosophical 
writings. 

§ 2. However the Greek philosophers may have sought after origin- 
ality and independence of thought, they could not avoid being influ- 
enced in their speculations by the peculiar circumstances of their own 
position. Hence the earliest philosophers may be classed according to 
the races and countries to which they belonged ; the idea of a school 
(that is, of a transmission of doctrines through an unbroken series of 
teachers and disciples) not being applicable to this period. 

The earliest attempts at philosophical speculation were made by the 
Ionians ; that race of the Greeks, which not only had, in common life, 
shown the greatest desire for new and various kinds of knowledge, but 
had also displayed the most decided taste for scientific researches into 
the phenomena of external nature. From this direction of their in- 
quiries, the Ionic philosophers were called by the ancients, " physical 
philosophers," or " physiologers." With a boldness characteristic of 
inexperience and ignorance, they began by directing their inquiries to 
the most abstruse subjects; and, unaided by any experiments which 
were not within the reach of a common man, and unacquainted with 
the first elements of mathematics, they endeavoured to determine the 
origin and principle of the existence of all things. If we are tempted 
to smile at the temerity with which these Ionians at once ventured upon 
the solution of the highest problems, we are, on the other hand, asto- 
nished at the sagacity with which many of them conjectured the con- 
nexion of appearances, which they could not fully comprehend without 
a much greater progress in the study of nature. The scope of these 
Ionian speculations proves that they were not founded on a priori rea- 
sonings, independent of experience. The Greeks were always distin- 
guished by their curiosity, and their powers of delicate observation. 
Yet this gifted nation, even when it had accumulated a large stock of 
knowledge concerning natural objects, seems never to have attempted 
more than the observation of phenomena which presented themselves 
unsought; and never to have made experiments devised by the investi- 
gator. 

§ 3. Before we pass from these general remarks to an account of the 
individual philosophers of the Ionic school, (taking the term in its most 
extended sense,) we must mention a man who is important as forming 
an intermediate link between the sacerdotal enthusiasts, Epimenides, 
Abaris, and others, noticed in the last chapter, and the Ionic physio- 
logers. -"IPherecydes, a native of the island of Syros, one of the Cyc- 
lades, is the earliest Greek of whose prose writings we possess any 
remains*, and was certainly one of the first who, after the manner of the 

" * See chap. 18. § 3. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 241 

lonians (before they had obtained any papyrus from Egypt), wrote 
down their unpolished wisdom upon sheep-skins.* But his prose is 
only so far prose that it has cast off the fetters of verse, and not because 
it expresses the ideas of the writer in a simple and perspicuous manner. 
His book began thus : " Zeus and Time (Chronos), and Chthonia ex- 
isted from eternity. Chthonia was called Earth (y>7), since Zeus 
endowed her with honour. ,, Pherecydes next relates how Zeus trans- 
formed himself into Eros, the god of love, wishing- to form the world 
from the original materials made by Chronos and Chthonia. " Zeus 
makes (Pherecydes goes on to say) a large and beautiful garment ; 
upon it he paints Earth and Ogenos (ocean), and the houses of Ogenos ; 
and he spreads the garment over a winged oak."t It is manifest, 
without attempting a complete explanation of these images, that the 
ideas and language of Pherecydes closely resembled those of the Orphic 
theologers, and that he ought rather to be classed with them than with 
the Ionic philosophers. 

§ 4. Pherecydes lived in the age of the Seven Sages ; one of 
whom, Thales of Miletus, was the first in the series of the Ionic 
physical philosophers. The Seven Sages, as we have already had 
occasion to observe, were not solitary thinkers, whose renown for 
wisdom was acquired by speculations unintelligible to the mass of the 
people. Their fame, which extended over all Greece, was founded 
solely on their acts as statesmen, counsellors of the people in public 
affairs, and practical men. This is also true of Thales, whose sagacity 
in affairs of state and public economy appears from many anecdotes. 
In particular, Herodotus relates, that, at the time when the lonians 
were threatened by the great Persian power of Cyrus, after the fall of 
Crcesus, Thales, who was then very old, advised them to establish an 
Ionian capital in the middle of their coast, somewhere near Teos, 
where all the affairs of their race might be debated, and to which all 
the other Ionic cities might stand in the same relation as the Attic 
demi to Athens. At an earlier age, Thales is said to have foretold to 
the lonians the total eclipse of the sun, which (either in 610 or 603 
b.c.) separated the Medes from the Lydians in the battle which was 
fought by Cyaxares against Halyattes.J For this purpose, he doubt- 
less employed astronomical formula?, which he had obtained, through 
Asia Minor, from the Chaldeans, the fathers of Grecian, and indeed 

* Herod. V. 58. The expression i'-^xv^ov h<p^a probably gave rise to the fable 
that Pherecydes was flayed as a punishment for his atheism ; a charge which was 
made against most of the early philosophers. t*» 

■}• See Sturz Commentatio de Pherecyde utroque, in his Pherecydis Fragmenta, 
ed. alt. 1824. The genuineness of the fragments is especially proved by the rare 
ancient Ionic forms, cited from them by the learned grammarians, Apollonius and 
Herodian. 

I If Thales was (as is stated by Eusebius) born in Olymp. 33. 2. b, c. G39, he 
was then either twenty-nine or thirty-six years old. 

R 



242 HISTORY OP THE 

of all ancient astronomy ; for his own knowledge of mathematics 
could not have reached as far as the Pythagorean theorem. He is said 
to have been the first teacher of such problems as that of the equality 
of the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle. In the main, the 
tendency of Thales was practical; and, where his own knowledge 
was insufficient, he applied the discoveries of nations more advanced 
than his own in natural science. Thus he was the first who advised 
his countrymen, when at sea, not to steer by the Great Bear, which 
forms a considerable circle round the Pole ; but to follow the example 
of the Phoenicians (from whom, according to Herodotus, the family 
of Thales was descended), and to take the Lesser Bear for their Polar 
star* 

Thales was not a poet, nor indeed the author of any written work, 
and, consequently, the accounts of his doctrine rest only upon the 
testimony of his contemporaries and immediate successors ; so that it 
would be vain to attempt to construct from them a system of natural 
philosophy according to his notions. It may, however, be collected 
from these traditions, that he considered all nature as endowed with 
life : " Everything (he said) is full of gods ;"f and he cited, as proofs 
of this opinion, the magnet and amber, on account of their magnetic 
and electric properties. It also appears that he considered water as a 
general principle or cause ; \ probably because it sometimes assumes a 
vapoury, sometimes a liquid form ; and therefore affords a remarkable 
example of a change of outward appearance. This is sufficient to show 
that Thales broke through the common prejudices produced by the 
impressions of the senses ; and sought to discover the principle of 
external forms in moving powers which lie beneath the surface of 
appearances. 

§ 5. Anaximander, also a Milesian, is next after Thales. It seems 
pretty certain that his little work " upon nature " (Trepl ^vrewe), — as 
the books of the Ionic physiologers were mostly called, — was written 
in Olymp. 58. 2. b. c. 547., when he was sixty-four years old. § This 
may be said to be the earliest philosophical work in the Greek language ; 
for we can scarcely give that name to the mysterious revelations of 

* This constellation was hence called $omxn. See Schol. Arat. Phoen. 39. Pro- 
bably some traditions of this kind served as the basis of the vuvnxvi aa-T^oXoyla., which 
was attributed to Thales by the ancients, but, according to a more precise account, 
was the work of a later writer, Phocius of Samos. 

f In the passage of Aristotle, de Anima, i. 5 . the words tuvtcx, nX-n^v huv uvxt, 
alone express the traditional account of the doctrine of Thales j the words tv'dku <rfo 
■$ux,h pifJuxScit are the gloss of Aristotle. 

\ 'a^yi, alrioi. The expression a^h was first used by Anaximander. 

§ From the statement of Apollodorus, that Anaximander was sixty-four years old 
in Olymp. 58. 2. (Diog. Laert. ii. 2), and of Pliny (N. H. ii. 8.), that the obliquity 
of the ecliptic was discovered in Olymp. 58, it may be inferred that Anaximander 
mentioned this year in his work. Who else could, at that time, have registered such 
discoveries ? 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 243 

Pherecydes. It was probably written in a style of extreme COflci 
ness, and in language more befitting poetry than prose, as indeed 
appears from the few extant fragments. The astronomical and 
geographical explanations attributed to Anaximander were probably 
contained in this work. Anaximander possessed a gnomon, or sun- 
dial, which he had doubtless obtained from Babylon ;* and, being at 
Sparta (which was still the focus of Greek civilization), he made ob- 
servations, by which he determined exactly the solstices and equinoxes 
and calculated the obliquity of the ecliptic. t According to Erato- 
sthenes, he was the first who attempted to draw a map ; in which his 
object probably was rather to make a mathematical division of the 
whole earth, than to lay down the forms of the different countries com- 
posing it. According to Aristotle, Anaximander thought that there 
were innumerable worlds, which he called gods ; supposing these 
worlds to be beings endowed with an independent power of motion. 
He also thought that existing worlds were always perishing, and that 
new worlds were always springing into being ; so that motion was per- 
petual. According to his views, these worlds arose out of the eternal, 
or rather indeterminable, substance, which he called to awetpov ; he 
arrived at the idea of an original substance, out of which all things 
arose, and to which all things return, by excluding all attributes and 
limitations. " All existing things (he says in an extant fragment) 
must, in justice, perish in that in which they had their origin. For 
one thing is always punished by another for its injustice (i. e., its in- 
justice in setting itself in the place of another), according to the order 
of time." + 

§ 6. Anaximenes, another Milesian, according to the general tradi- 
tion of antiquity, followed Anaximander, and must, therefore, have 
flourished not long before the Persian war. § With him the Ionic 
philosophy began to approach closer to the language of argumentative 
discussion; his work was composed in the plain simple dialect of the 
Ionians. Anaximenes, in seeking to discover some sensible substance, 
from which outward objects could have been formed, thought that air 
best fulfilled the conditions of his problem ; and he showed much in- 
genuity in collecting instances of the rarefaction and condensation of 
bodies from air. This elementary principle of the Ionians was always 
considered as having an independent power of motion ; and as endowed 

* Herod. II. 109. Concerning Anaximander's gnomon, see.Diog.Laert.il. 1, 
and others. 

t The obliquity of the ecliptic (that is, the distance of the sun's course from the 
equator) must have been evident to any one who observed it with attention ; but 
Anaximander found the means of measuring it, in a certain manner, with the 
gnomon. 

I Simplicius ad Aristot. Phys. fol. 6. 

§ The more precise statements respecting his date are so contused, that it is dif- 
ficult to unravel them. See Clinton in the Philological Museum, vol. i. p. 91. 

r2 



244 HISTORY OF THE 

with certain attributes of the divine essence. " As the soul in us (says 
Anaximenes in an extant fragment),* which is air, holds us together, 
so breath and air surround the whole world." 

§ 7. A person of far greater importance in the history of Greek phi- 
losophy, and especially of Greek prose, is Heraclitus of Ephesus. 
The time when he flourished is ascertained to be about the 69th Olym- 
piad, or b.c. 505. He is said to have dedicated his work, which was 
entitled " Upon Nature" (though titles of this kind were usually not 
added to books till later times), to the native goddess of Ephesus, the 
great Artemis -as if such a destination were alone worthy of it, and 
he did not consider it worth his while to give it to the public. The 
concurrent tradition of antiquity describes Heraclitus as a proud and 
reserved man, who disliked all interchange of ideas with others. He 
thought that the profound cogitations on the nature of things which 
he had made in solitude, were far more valuable than all the informa- 
tion which he could gain from others. " Much learning (he said) does 
not produce wisdom ; otherwise it would have made Hesiod wise, and 
Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecatseus."t He dealt rather 
in intimations of important truths than in popular expositions of them, 
such as the other Ionians preferred. His language was prose only 
inasmuch as it was free from metrical shackles ; but its expressions 
were bolder and its tone more animated than those of many poems. 
The cardinal doctrine of his natural philosophy seems to have been, 
that every thing is in perpetual motion, that nothing has any stable or 
permanent existence, but that everything is assuming a new form or 
perishing. " We step (he says, in his symbolical language) into the 
same rivers and we do not step into them" (because in a moment the 
water is changed). " We are and are not" (because no point in our 
existence remains fixed). J Thus every sensible object appeared to 
him, not as something individual, but only as another form of some- 
thing else. " Fire (he says) lives the death of the earth ; air lives 
the death of fire ; water lives the death of air ; and the earth that of 
water ;"§ by which he meant that individual things were only different 
forms of a universal substance, which mutually destroy each other. In 

* Stobsms, Eclog.. p. 296. 

f In Diog. Laert. X. 1: ■TToXupuC's/) voev ob %&a.trxu (better than Qvsi)- 'HrioSev ya.% 
av ih(%u.%i xcti Tlv6a.yooY,v, ccu6l; ri Sivofuviu, rt xcti 'ExaraTev. All important passage 
on the first appearance of learning among tbe Greeks. 

+ UorcefioT; ro7; abrot; Iftfiuivaf&iv <ri xu) obx ipfiuivo/uizv, Ufiiv ri xca obx iifitv, Heraclitr 
Alleg. Horn. c. xxiv. p. 84. The image of a stream, into which a person cannot 
step twice, as it is always diffeient, was used by Heraclitus in several parts of his 
work, in order to show that all existing things are in a constant state of flux. 

O Z-/i <ruo roy yr,; eavurov, xut c&ng Zy tov Tugo; £ccva,Tov, Z%uq Zq tov a.'ip»$ Qavxrov, yv 
t2v vIuto;. Maxim. Tyr. Diss. xxv. p. 2G0. The expression that one thing lives 
the death of another is" frequent in the fragments of Heraclitus, aud generally he 
appears often to use certain fixed phrases. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GnEF.CE. 21.) 

like manner lie said of men and gods, " Our life is their death ; their 
life is our death;"* that is, he thought that men were gods who bad 
died, and that gods were men raised to life. 

Seeking in natural phenomena for the principle of this perpetual 
motion, Heraclitus supposed it to he flre, though he probably meant, 
not the fire perceptible by the senses, but a higher and more universal 
agent. For, as we have already seen, he conceived the sensible fire as 
living and dying, like the other elements ; but of the igneous principle 
of life he speaks thus: " The unchanging order of all things was made 
neither by a god nor a man, but it 'has always been, is, and will be, the 
living fire, which is kindled and extinguished in regular succession. "f 
Nevertheless, Heraclitus conceived this continual motion not to be the 
mere work of chance, but to be directed by some power, which he called 
d}xapfxi)n^ or fate, and which guided " the way upwards and down- 
wards" (his expression for production and destruction). " The sun 
(he said) will not overstep its path ; if it did, the Erinnyes, the allies 
of justice, would find it out.'J He recognised in motion an eternal 
law, which was maintained by the supreme powers of the universe. In 
this respect the followers of Heraclitus appear to have departed from 
the wise example of their teacher; for the exaggerated Heraclitcans 
(whom Plato in joke calls ot peovrer, " the runners") aimed at proving 
a perpetual change and motion in all things. 

Heraclitus, like nearly all the other philosophers, despised the popular 
religion. Their object was, by arguments derived from their immediate 
experience, to emancipate themselves from all traditional opinions, which 
included not only superstition and prejudices, but also some of the most 
valuable truths. Heraclitus boldly rejected the whole ceremonial of 
the Greek religion. " They worship images (he said of his country- 
men) : just as if any one were to converse with houses.'"§ Neverthe- 
less, the opinions of Heraclitus on the important question of the rela- 
tion between mind and body agreed with the popular religion and with 
the prevailing notions of the Greeks. The primitive beings of the 
world were, in the popular creed, both spiritual powers and material 
substances ; and Heraclitus conceived the original matter of the world 
to be the source of life. On the other hand, one of the most impoitant 
changes in the history of the human mind was produced by Anaxagoras 
after the time of Heraclitus, inasmuch as he rejected all the popular 

* Zvftiv rov \xuvtat 6a.vu.rov, n6vr t xafitv Vt toy ixiivuv /3/#v. Philo. Alleg. leg. p. 60. 
Heracl. Alleg. Horn. c. xxiv. 

•f* Kofffiev rov alrov kwuvruv ovri n; 6iuv ovr a.\6^uTuv tToir.o-tv, aXA.' r,t ail xa) Xtrnv 
xa) 'io-rai TV(> usi^uov uxropivov ftirox xa) a.*oo-(Zivvvju.ivov pir^a. Clemens Alex. Strom, 
v. p. 599. 

+ "HX/o; oy£ vTtgfivfftrut fi'irqa.' U 21 f/-h, 'Eglvvis ftiv Ai'ktis Wixovfei \\ivp\oovim. Plu- 
tarch, De Exil. c. xi. p. 604. 

§ Ka) ayaXuao-i rovr'ioiiri iti^ovrai, oxoHov it n; Yopns Xio-^nvtvoiro. CJeniens Alex. 
Cohort, p. 33, 



246 HISTORY OP THE 

notion^pn religion and struck into a new path of speculation on sacred 
things. Similar opinions had indeed been previously entertained in 
the East, and, in particular, the Mosaic conceptions of the Deity and 
the world belong to the same class of religious views. But among the 
Greeks these views (which the Christian religion has made so familiar 
in modern times) were first introduced by Anaxagoras, and were pre- 
sented by him in a philosophical form ; and having been, from the 
beginning, much more opposed than the doctrines of former philo- 
sophers to the popular mythological religion, they tended powerfully, 
by their rapid diffusion, to undermine the principles upon which the 
entire worship of the ancient gods rested, and therefore prepared the 
way for the subsequent triumph of Christianity. 

§ 8. Anaxagoras, though he is called a disciple of Anaximenes, fol- 
lowed him at some interval of time ; he flourished at a period when not 
only the opinions of the Ionic physical philosophers, but those of the 
Pythagoreans and even of the Eleatics, had been diffused in Greece, 
and had produced some influence upon speculation. But since it is 
impossible to arrange together the contemporaneous advances of the 
different schools or series of philosophers, and since Anaxagoras re- 
sembled his Ionic predecessors both in the object of his researches and 
his mode of expounding them, we will finish the series of the Ionic 
philosophers before we proceed to the Eleatics and Pythagoreans. 

The main events of the life of Anaxagoras are known with tolerable 
certainty from concurrent chronological accounts. He was born at 
Clazomenae, in Ionia, in Olymp. 70, 1, B.C. 500, and came to Athens 
in Olymp. 81, 1, B.C. 456.* There he lived for twenty-five years 
(which is also called thirty in round numbers), till about the beginning 
of the Peloponnesian war. At this time there was a faction in the 
Athenian state whose object it was to shake the power of the great 
statesman Pericles, and to lower his credit with the people ; but before 
they ventured to make a direct attack upon him, they began by attacking 
his friends and familiars. Among these was Anaxagoras, at that time 
far advanced in age ; and the freedom of his inquiries into Nature had 
afforded sufficient ground for accusing him of unbelief in the gods 
adored by the people. The discrepancy of the testimony makes it dif- 
ficult to ascertain the result of this accusation ; but thus much is cer- 
tain, that in consequence of it Anaxagoras left Athens in Olymp. 87, 2, 
B.C. 431. He died three years afterwards at Lampsacus, in Olymp. 
88, 1, B.C. 428, at the age of seventy-two. 

The treatise on Nature by Anaxagoras (which was written late in his 
life, and therefore at Athens) f was in the Ionic dialect, and in prose, 

* In the archonship of Callias, who has been confounded with Callias or Callia- 
des, archon in Olymp. 75, I. This time, in the midst of the terrors of the Persian 
war, was little favourable to the philosophical studies of Anaxagoras. 

t After Empedocles was known as a philosopher, Aristot. Metaph. i. 3, where 
l^yoi expresses the entire philosophical performances. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 247 

after the example of Anaximenes. The copious fragments extant* 
exhibit short sentences connected by particles (ay, and, but, for) with- 
out long periods. But though his style was loose, his reasoning was 
compact and well arranged. His demonstrations were synthetic, not 
analytic; that is to say, he subjoined the proof to the proposiiion to be 
proved, instead of arriving at his result by a process of inquiry. f 

The philosophy of Anaxagoras began with his doctrine of atoms, 
which, contrary to the opinion of all his predecessors, Vie considered as 
limited in number. He was the first to exclude the idea of creation 
from his explanation of nature. " The Greeks (he said) were mis- 
taken in their doctrine of creation and destruction; for nothing is 
either created or destroyed, but it is only produced from existing things 
by mixture, or it is dissolved by separation. They should therefore 
rather call creation a conjunction, and destruction a dissolution.'^ It 
is easy to imagine that Anaxagoras, with this opinion, must have arrived 
at the doctrine of atoms which were unchangeable and imperishable, 
and which were mixed and united in bodies in different ways. But 
since, from the want of chemical knowledge, he was unable to deter- 
mine the component parts of bodies, he supposed that each separate 
body (as bone, flesh, wood, stone) consisted of corresponding particles, 
which are the celebrated 6/j.owfxipEiai of Anaxagoras. Nevertheless, to 
explain the production of one thing from another he was obliged to 
assume that all things contained a portion of all other things, and that 
the particular form of each body depended upon the preponderating 
ingredient. Now, as Anaxagoras maintained the doctrine that bodies 
are mere matter, without any spontaneous power of change, he also 
required a principle of life and motion beyond the material world. This 
he called spirit (vovg), which, he says, is " the purest and most subtle 
of all things, having the most knowledge and the greatest strength. "§ 
Spirit does not obey the universal law of the 6/j.otoixipeiai, viz. that of 
mixing with every thing ; it exists in animate beings, but not so closely 
combined with the material atoms as these are with each other. This 
spirit gave to all those material atoms, which in the beginning of the 
world lay in disorder, the impulse by which they took the forms of indi- 
vidual things and beings. Anaxagoras considered this impulse as having 
been given by the vovq in a circular direction; according to his opinion, 
not only the sun, moon, and stars, but even the air and the aether, are 

* The longest is in Simplicius ad Aristot. Phys. p. 336. Anaxagorao Fragmenta 
Illustrata, ab E. Schaubach, Lipsiae, 1827 ; fragm. 8. 

f Hence, for example, the passage concerning production quoted lower down was 
not at the beginning, but followed the propositions about ifioio/xi^tixt, votJj, and motion. 

+ Simplicius ad Phys. p. 346, fragm. 22, Schaubach. Concerning the position 
see Panzerbieter de Fragm. Anaxag. Online, p. 9, 21. 

§ "Etti yu% XiTrorctrov n <~a.\-uv %£r>/u.oir&»> xat xa.0ugu~a.-Tov, xa) y\&>firi)i yi *t£t txt- 
tos Tatrav "<r%u } xu\ 1<tx,6u piyiirrov. Simplicius, ubi sup. Fragm. 8, Schaub. 



248 HISTORY OF THE 

constantly moving- in a circle.* He thought that the power of this 
circular motion kept all these heavenly bodies (which he supposed to 
be masses of stone) in their courses. No doctrine of Anaxagoras gave 
so much offence, or was considered so clear a proof of his atheism, as 
his opiuion that the sun, the bountiful god Helios, who shines upon 
both mortals and immortals, was a mass of red-hot hron.f How startling 
must these opinions have appeared at a time when the people were ac- 
customed to consider nature as pervaded by a thousand divine powers ! 
And yet these new doctrines rapidly gained the ascendancy, in spite of 
all the opposition of religion, poetry, and even the laws which Mere 
intended to protect the ancient customs and opinions. A hundred 
years later Anaxagoras, with his doctrine of vovq, appeared to Aristotle 
a sober inquirer, as compared with the wild speculators who preceded 
him \X although Aristotle was aware that his applications of his doc- 
trines were unsatisfactory and defective. For as Anaxagoras endea- 
voured to explain natural phenomena, and in this endeavour he, like 
other natural philosophers, extended the influence of natural causes to 
its utmost limits, he of course attempted to explain as much as possible 
by his doctrine of circular motion, and to have recourse as rarely as 
possible to the agency of vovq. Indeed, it appears that he only intro- 
duced the latter, like a deus ex machina, when all other means of ex- 
planation failed. 

§ 9. Although Diogenes of Apollonia. (in Crete) is not equal in 
importance, as a philosopher, to his contemporary Anaxagoras, he is 
yet too considerable a writer upon physical subjects to be here passed 
over in silence. Without being either the disciple or the teacher, he 
was a contemporary, of Anaxagoras ; and in the direction of his studies 
he closely followed Anaximenes, expanding the main doctrines of this 
philosopher rather than establishing new principles of his own. He 
began his treatise (which was written in the Ionic dialect) with the 
laudable principle, " It appears to me that every one who begins a dis- 
course ought to state the subject with distinctness, and to make the 
style simple and dignified. "§ He then laid down the principle main- 

* The mathematical studies of Anaxagoras appear likewise to have referred 
chiefly to the circle. He attempted a solution of the problem of the quadrature of 
the circle, and, according to Vitruvius, he instituted some inquiries concerning' the 
optical arrangement of the stage and theatre, which also depended on properties of 
the circle. 

t pvhoos "hiu.w£o;. This opinion concerning the substance of the heavenly bodies 
was in great measure founded upon the great meteoric stone which fell at ^)gos 
Potami, on the Hellespont, in Olymp. 78, 1 ; Anaxagoras and Diogenes of Apol- 
lonia both spoke of this phenomenon. Boeckh Corp. Inscript. Gr. vol. ii. p. 320. 

\ Aristot. Met. A. iii. p. 984, ed. Berol. : olov vr,<puv \<$a.vn vug tlr.y Xtyovrxs rov; 

o Aoyev tu.vto$ a^op t*ov %oxiu ftoi Xi'-^ ^ VKl <r ^ v ^-PZ' ,V ccvafificrfsnTurov •ra.^ix ia '^ oc, i 
t/v d\ Iqifemmint oc,tX?,v neu A/tv/iv. Diog. Laert. vi. 81, ix. 57. Diogen. Apolloniat. 
Fragm., ed. F. Panzerbieter (Lipsia;, 1830), Fragm. i. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 2 1<) 

tained by all the physic.il philosophers who preceded Anaxagoias, viz. 
that all things art different forms of the same elementary substance; 
which principle he proved by saying that otherwise one thing could 
not proceed out of another and be nourished by it. Diogenes, like 
Anaximenes, supposed this elementary substance to be air, and, as he 
conceived it endowed with animation, he found proofs of his doctrine 
not only in natural phenomena, but also in the human soul, which, 
according to the popular notions of the ancient Greeks, was breath 
(^ U X'))> an d therefore air. In his explanations of natural appearances 
Diogenes went into great detail, especially with regard to the structure 
of the human body ; and he exhibited not only acquirements which 
are very respectable for his time, but also a spirit of inquiry and dis- 
cussion, and a habit of analytical investigation, which are not to be 
found even in Anaxagoias. The language of Diogenes also shows 
an attempt at a closer connexion of ideas by means of periodic sen- 
tences, although the difficulty of taking a general philosophical view 
is very apparent in his style.* 

Diogenes, like Anaxagoias, lived at. Athens, and is said to have 
been exposed to similar dangers. A third Ionic physical philosopher 
of this time, Archelaus of Miletus, who followed the manner of Anaxa- 
goras, is chiefly important from having established himself permanently 
at Athens. It is evident that these men were not drawn to Athens by 
any prospect of benefit to their philosophical pursuits; for the Athe- 
nians at this time showed a disinclination to such studies, which they 
ridiculed under the name of inetcorosophy, and even made the subject 
of persecution. It was undoubtedly the power which Athens had ac- 
quired as the head of the confederates against Persia, and the oppres- 
sion of the states of Asia Minor, which drove these philosophers from 
Clazomenaj and Mi'.etus to the independent, wealthy, and flourishing 
Athens. And thus these political events contributed to transfer to 
Athens the last elforts of Ionic philosophy, which the Athenians at first 
rejected as foreign to their modes of thinking, but which they after- 
wards understood and appreciated, and used as a foundation for more 
extensive and accurate investigations of their own. 

§ 10. But before Athens had reached this pre eminence in philo- 
sophy, the spirit of speculation was awakened in other parts of Greece, 
and had struck into new paths of inquiry. The Elcatics afford a re- 
markable instance of independent philosophical research at this period ; 
for, although Ionians by descent, they departed very widely from their 
countrymen on the coast of Asia Minor. Elea, (afterwards Velia, ac- 
cording to the Roman pronunciation,) was a colony founded in Italy 
by the Phocecans, when, from a noble love of freedom, they had dcli- 

* Especially in the fragment in Sitnplicius ad Aribtot. Phys. p< 32. 6 ; Frsgtn. ii. 

ed. Fanztrbieter. 



250 HISTORY OP THE 

vered up their country in Asia Minor to the Persians, and had been 
forced by the enmity of the Etruscans and Carthaginians to abandon 
their first settlement in Corsica ; which happened about the 61st Olym- 
piad, b. c. 536. It is probable that Xenophanes, a native of Colophon, 
was concerned in the' colonizing of Elea ; he wrote an epic poem of two 
thousand verses upon this settlement, as he had sung the foundation of 
Colophon ; he has been before mentioned as an elegiac poet.* It 
appears that poetry was the main employment of his earlier years, and 
that he did not attach himself to philosophy until he had settled at 
Elea: for there is no trace of the influence of his Ionic countrymen in 
his philosophy ; and again his philosophy was established only in Elea, 
and never gained a footing among the Ionians in Asia Minor. All the 
chronological statements are consistent with the supposition that he 
flourished in Elea as a philosopher between the 65th and 70th Olym- 
piads, t But, even as a philosopher, Xenophanes retained the poetic 
form of composition ; his work upon nature was written in epic language 
and metre, and he himself recited it at public festivals after the manner 
of a rhapsodist.J This deviation from the practice of the Ionic phy- 
sical philosophers, (of whom, at least, Anaximander and Anaximenes 
must have been known to him,) can hardly be explained by the fact that 
he had, upon other subjects, accustomed himself to a poetical form. 
Some other and weightier cause must have induced him to deliver his 
thoughts upon the nature of things in a more dignified and pretending 
manner than his predecessors. This cause, doubtless, was the elevation 
and enthusiasm of mind, which were connected with the fundamental 
principles of the Eleatic philosophy. 

Xenophanes, from the first, adopted a different principle from that of 
the Ionic, physical philosophers ; for he proceeded upon an ideal system, 
while their system was exclusively founded upon experience. Xeno- 
phanes began with the idea of the godhead, and showed the necessity 
of conceiving it as an eternal and unchanging existence. § The lofty 
idea of an everlasting and immutable God, who is all spirit and mind,|| 
was described in his poem as the only true knowledge. " Wherever (he 
says) I might direct my thoughts, they always returned to the one and 
unchanging being; every thing, however I examined it, resolved itself 

* Chap. x. § 16. The verse of Xenophanes, U^xixo? rxrP of h M^o; a<pixsro, 
Atheu. ii. p. 54. E v prohably refers to the arrival of the army of Cyrus in Ionia. 

f Especially that he mentioned Pythagoras, and that Heraclitus and Epicharmus 
mentioned him. Xenophanes lived at Zancle (Diog. Laert. ix. 18) ; evidently not 
till after it had become Ionian, that is, after Olymp. 70.4. b.c. 497. He is also 
said to have been alive in the reign of Hiero, Olymp. 75. 3. b. c. 478. (See Clin- 
ton F. H. ad a. 477.) 

\ auros IggaipcJiu <to\ Icturov. 

§ See principally the treatise of Aristotle (or Theophrastus) de Xenophane, Ze- 
none, et Gorgia. 

|| This idea is expressed in the verse : ovXot o^a, oSkos $1 vou, ovXes li r kkovu. See 
Xenophonis Colophonii carminum reliquiae, ed. S. Karsten. Brux. 1830. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 251 

into the self-same nature."* How he reconciled these doctrines with 
the evidence of the senses, we are not sufficiently informed ; but be 
does not appear to have worked out the pantheistic doctrine of one God 
comprehending all things with the logical consistency and definiicmss 
of ideas which we shall find in his successor. Probably, however, he 
considered all experience and tradition as mere opinion and apparent 
truth. Xenophanes did not hesitate to represent openly the anthropo- 
morphic conceptions of the Greeks concerning their gods as mere pre- 
judices. " If (said he) oxen and lions had hands wherewith to paint 
and execute works as men do, they would paint gods with forms and 
bodies like their own; horses like horses, oxen like oxen„"f Homer 
and Hesiod, the poets who developed and established these anthropo- 
morphic conceptions, were considered by Xenophanes as corrupters of 
genuine religion. " These poets, are not contented with ascribing 
human qualities and virtues to the gods, but have attributed to them 
everything which is a shame and reproach among men, as thieving, 
adultery, and deceit." J This is the first decided manifestation of that 
discord which henceforth reigned between poets and philosophers, and, 
as is well known, was still carried on with much vehemence in the time 
of Plato. 

§ 11. Xenophanes was followed by Parmenides of Elea, who, as we 
know from Plato, was born about Olymp. 66. 2, and passed some time 
at Athens, when he was about 65 years old.§ It is therefore possible 
that in his youth he may have conversed with Xenophanes, although 
Aristotle mentions with doubt the tradition that he was the disciple of 
the latter philosopher. It is, however, certain that the philosophy of 
Parmenides has much of the spirit of that of Xenophanes, and differs 
from it chiefly in having reached a maturer state. The all-comprehen- 
siveness of the Deity, which appeared to Xenophanes a refuge from 
the difficulties of metaphysical speculation, was demonstrated by Par- 
menides by arguments derived from the idea of existence. This mode 
of deductive reasoning from certain simple fundamental principles 
(analogous to mathematical reasoning) was first employed to a great 
extent by Parmenides. His whole philosophy rests upon the idea of 
existence, which, strictly understood, excludes the ideas of creation and 

* This is the meaning of the passage in Sext. Bmpir. Hypot i. 224. 

OTTY) yot.% if*OV VOOV tl^UffXI/jLt 

us £v Toclro n <rav aviXviro, -rav 5i ov [01 ?J ctlu 
Teivrn avikKOftivov fttxv US tpitrtv "<rrecf opo'iav. 

The first metaphor is taken from a journey, the second from the balance. 
f Clem. Alex. Strom, v. p. 601. fragm. 6. Karsten. 

* Sext. Empir. ad Mathem. ix. p. 193. fr. 7. Karsten. 

t Parmenides came, at the age of 65, with Zeno, who was at the age of 40, to 
great Panathenaea. (See Plato Parmen. p. 127.) Socrates (bom, „ Ohraro. 77. 
3 or 4) was then rffoa >io h but yet old enough to take a part in philotoplucal in- 
cussions, and therefore probably about the age of 20. Accordingly tins ph.U.so- 
phical meeting (unless it be a pure invention oi Plato) cannot be placed before 
Olymp. 82. 3 ; from which date the rest follows. 



252 history of the 

annihilation. For, as he says himself, in some sonorous verses,* " How 
could that which exists, first will to exist? how could it become what it 
is not ? If it becomes what it is not, it no longer exists ; and the same, 
if it begins to exist. Thus all idea of creation is extinguished ; and 
annihilation is incredible." Although in this and other passages the 
expression of such abstract ideas in epic metre and language may excite 
surprise, yet there is great harmony between the matter of Parmenides 
and the form in which he has clothed it. His pantheistic doctrine of 
existence, which he pursued into all its logical consequences, and to 
which he sacrificed all the evidence of the senses, appeared to him a 
great and holy revelation. His whole poem on nature was composed 
in this spirit ; and he expressed (though in figurative language) his 
genuine sentiments, when he related that " the coursers which carry 
men as far as thought can reach, accompanied by the virgins of the 
Sun, brought him to the gates of day and night; that here Justice, who 
keeps the key of the gate, took him by the hand, addressed him in a 
friendly manner, and announced to him that he was destined to know 
everything, the fearless spirit of convincing truth, and the opinions of 
mortals in which no sure trust is to be placed, &c."t And accordingly 
his poem, in pursuance of the subject mentioned in these verses, began 
with the doctrine of pure existence, and then proceeded to an explana- 
tion of the phenomena of external nature. It was given in the form of 
a revelation by the goddess Justice, who was described as passing from 
the first to the second branch of the subject in the following manner : 
" Here I conclude my sure discourse and thoughts upon truth ; hence- 
forward hear human opinions, and listen to the deceitful ornaments of 
my speech." Here however Parmenides evidently disparages his own 
labours ; for, although in this second part he departed from his funda- 
mental principle, still it is clear, from the fragments which exist, that he 
never lost sight of his object of bringing the opinions founded on ex- 
ternal perceptions, into closer accordance with the knowledge of pure 
intellect. 

§ 12. As compared with this great luminary of philosophical pan- 
theism, his successors (whose youth, at least, falls in the time of which 
we are treating) appear as lesser lights. It will be sufficient for our 
purpose to explain the philosophical character of Melissus and Zeno. 
The first was a native of Samos, and was distinguished as being the 
general who resolutely defended his city against the Athenians, in the 
war of Olymp. 85. 1. B.C. 440, and even defeated the Athenian fleet, 
in the absence of Pericles. He followed close upon Parmenides, whose 
doctrines he appears to have transferred into Ionic prose ; and thus 
gave greater "perspicuity and order to the arguments which the former 

* Ap. Simplic. ad Aristot. Phys. f. 31. b. v. 80 sqq. in Brandis Commentationes 
Eleatica?. 
f Sext. Empir. adv. Mathem. vii. 111. Comm. Eleat. v. 1 sqq. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 258 

had veiled in poetic forms.* The other, Zeno of Elea, a friend and 
disciple of Panne nides, also developed the doctrines of Parmeuides in a 
prose work, in which his chief object was to justify the disjunction of 
philosophical speculation from the ordinary modes of thought (c6£u). 
This he did, by showing the absurdities involved in the doctrines of 
variety, of motion, and of creation, opposed to that of an all-compre- 
hending- substance. Yet the sophisms seriously advanced by him show 
how easily the mind is caught in its own snares, when it mistakes its 
own abstractions for realities ;t and it only depended upon these 
Eleatics to argue with the same subtlety against the doctrine of ex- 
istence and unity, in order to make it appear equally absurd with those 
which they strove to confute. 

§ 13. Before we turn from the Eleatics to those other philosophers of 
Italy, to whom the name of Italic has been appropriated, we must 
notice a Sicilian, who is so peculiar both in his personal qualities and 
his philosophical doctrines, that he cannot be classed with any sect, 
although his opinions were influenced by those of the lonians, the 
Eleatics, and the Pythagoreans. Empedocles of Agrigentum does 
not belong* to so early a period as might be inferred from the accounts 
of his character and actions, which represent him as akin to Epimenides 
or Abaris. It is known that this Empedocles, the son of Meton,J 
flourished about the eighty-fourth Olympiad, b. c. 444, when he was 
concerned in the colony of Thurii, which was established by nearly all 
the Hellenic races, with unanimous enthusiasm and great hopes of 
success, upon the site of the ruined Sybaris. Aristotle considers him 
as a contemporary of Anaxagoras, but as having preceded him in the 
publication of his writings. Empedocles was held in high honour by 
his countrymen of Agrigentum, and also apparently by the other Doric 
states of Sicily. He reformed the constitution of his native city, by 
abolishing the oligarchical council of the Thousand ; which measure 
gave such general satisfaction, that the people are said to have offered 
him the regal authority. The fame of Empedocles was, however, 

* In order to give an example of Ins manner, we translate a fragment of 
Melissus in Simplic. ad Phys. f. 22 b. a If nothing exists, what can be predicated of 
it as of something existing ? But if something exists, it is either produced or 
eternal. If it is produced, it is produced either from something which exists, or 
from something which does not exist. But it is impossible that anything should 
be produced from that which does not exist ; for, since nothing which exists is pro- 
duced from that which does not exist, much less can abstract existence (to «tA«j 
toy) be so produced. In like manner, that which exists cannot be produced from 
that which does not exist; for in that case it would exist without having been pro- 
duced. That which exists cannot therefore change. It is, therefore, eternal." 

f Thus Zeno, in order to disprove the existence of space (which he sought to 
disprove, for the purpose of disproving the existence of motion), argued as follows : 
* If space exists, it must be in something ; there must, therefore, be a space con- 
taining space." He did not consider that the idea of space is only conceived, in 
order to answer the question, In what ? not the question, What ? 

X There was an earlier Empedocles, the father of Meton, who gained the prize 
with the raco-horse in Olymp. 71. 



254 HISTORY OF THE 

principally acquired by improvements which he made in the physical 
condition of large tracts of country. He destroyed the pestiferous ex- 
halations of the marshes about Selinus, by carrying two small streams 
through the swampy grounds, and thus draining off the water. This 
act is recorded on some beautiful coins of Selinus, which are still ex- 
tant.* In other places he blocked up some narrow valleys with large 
constructions, and thus screened a town from the noxious winds which 
blew into it ; by which he earned to himself the title of "wind averter" 
(fjwAvoTU'Eymc).! It is probable that Empedocles did not conceal his 
consciousness of possessing extraordinary intellectual powers, and of 
rising above the limited capacities of the mass of mankind ; so that we 
need not wonder at his having been considered by his countrymen in 
Sicily as a person endowed with supernatural and prophetic gifts. 
Among the sharpsighted and sceptical Ionians, who were always seeking 
to penetrate into the natural causes of appearances, such an opinion 
could scarcely have gained ground at this time. But the Dorians in 
Sicily were as yet accustomed to connect all new events with their 
ancient belief in the gods, and to conceive them in the spirit of their 
religious traditions. 

The poem of Empedocles upon nature also bears the mark of enthu- 
siasm, both in its epic language and the nature of its contents. At the 
beginning of it he said, that fate and the divine will had decreed that, 
if one of the gods should be betrayed into defiling his hands with blood, 
he should be condemned to wander about for thirty thousand years, far 
removed from the immortals. He then described himself to have been 
exiled from heaven, for having engaged in deadly conflict, and com- 
mitted murder. % As, therefore, since the heroic times of Greece, a 
fugitive murderer required an expiation and purification ; so a god 
ejected from heaven, and condemned to appear in the likeness of a 
man, required some purification that might enable him to resume his 
original high estate. This purification was supposed to be in part 
accomplished by the lofty contemplations of the poem, which was 
hence — either wholly or in part — called a song of expiation (t:adapfiol). 
According to the idea of the transmigration of souls, Empedocles sup- 
posed that, since his exile from heaven, he had been a shrub, a fish, 
a bird, a boy, and a girl. For the present, " the powers which conduct 
souls" had borne him to the dark cavern of the earth ;§ and from 
hence the return to divine honours was open to him, as to seers and 

* Concerning these coins, see Annali dell' Instituto di corrisp. archeologica, 1835. 
p. 265. 

f Empedocles Agrigentinus, de vita et philosophia ejus exposuit, carrainum reli- 
quias collegit Sturz. Lipsiae. 1805, T. 1. p. 49. 

+ Fragment ap. Plutarch, de exilio. c. 17. (p. 607.) ap. Sturz. v. 3. sqq. 

6 V. 362. and v. 9. in Sturz (from Diog. Laert. viii. 77. and Porphyr. de autro 
nymph, c. 8.) ought evidently to he connected in the manner indicated in the 
text. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT (J HI 

poets, and other benefactors of mankind. The great doctrine, that I 
is the power which formed the world, was probably announced to 
him by the Muse whom he invoked, ee the ■ecrel by the contemplation 
of which he was to emancipate himself from all the baneful ell., 
discord * 

The physical philosophy of Empedocles has much in common with 
that of the Eleatics ; and hence Zeno is said to have commented on his 
poem, that is, probably, he reduced it to the strict principles of the 
Eleatic school. It has also much in common with the philosophy of 
Anaxagoras; which would itself scarcely have arisen, if the Eleatic 
doctrine of eternal existence had not been already opposed to that of 
Heraclitus concerning the flux of things. Empedocles also denied the 
possibility of creation and destruction, and saw in the pro 
called nothing more than combination and separation of parts; like the 
Eleatics, he held the doctrine of an eternal and imperishable existence. 
But he considered this existence as having different natures ; inasmuch 
as he supposed that there are four elements of things. To these he 
gave mythological names, calling tire the all-penetrating Zeus ; air, 
the life-giving Here; earth (as being the gloomy abode of exiled 
spirits), Aidoneus ; and water, by a name of his own, Nestis. These 
four elements he supposed to be governed by two principles, one posi- 
tive and one negative, that is to say, connecting, creating love, and 
dissolving, destroying discord. By the working of discord the world 
was disturbed from its original condition, when all things were at rest 
in the form of a globe, " the divine sphaerus ;" and a series of changes 
began, from which the existing world gradually arose. Empedocles 
described and explained, with much ingenuity, the beautiful structure 
of the universe, and treated of the nature of the earth's surface and its 
productions. In these inquiries he appears to have anticipated some 
of the discoveries of modern science. Thus, for example, his doctrine 
that mountains and rocks had been raised by a subterranean href is 
an anticipation of the theory of elevation established by recent geolo- 
gists ; and his descriptions of the rude and grotesque forms of the 
earliest animals seem almost to show that he was acquainted with the 
fossil remains of extinct races. J 

§ 14. We now turn to that class of ancient philosophers which in 

* This is proved by the passage in Simplic. ad Phys. f. 3 1. v. 52. sq. Sturz. : 
Km <£t\orns iv <ro7ffiv, "urn (Jt^x-'oi ti tXo.tos ri. 
<r»jv <rv vow Yipxiu, ftYih' o/u,fACi<riv r\o~o ri0yiT&>S> &C. 
In like manner the Muse says to the poet: 

erv ovv i-ru uo' iXiu<r0nSi 
mUiaC oh tXu'ov yi fyoTitn p^Tis ofugiv. 
v. 331. from Sext. Empir. adv. math. vii. 122. sq. The invocation oi' the Mi. 
in Sext. Empir. adv. Math. vii. 124. v. 341. sq. 
•J- Plutarch de primo frig. c. 19. (p. 953.) 
\ See ;Elian Hist. An. xvi. 29. ap. Sturz. v 14 gq. 



256 HISTORY OF THE 

Greece itself was called the Italic;* the most obscure region of the 
Greek philosophy, as we have no accounts of individual writings, and 
scarcely even of individual writers, belonging to it. Nevertheless, the 
personal history of Pythagoras, the most conspicuous name among the 
Italic philosophers, is not so obscure as to compel us to resort to the 
hypothesis of an antehistorical Pythagoras, from whom a sort of Pytha- 
gorean religion, together with the primitive constitution of the Italian 
cities, was derived, and who had been celebrated in very early legends 
as the instructor of Numa and the author of an ancient civilization and 
philosophy in Italy .f The Greeks who first make mention of Pytha- 
goras (viz. Heraclitus and Xenoplianes) do not speak of him as a 
fabulous person. Heraclitus, in particular, mentions him as a rival 
whose method of seeking wisdom differed from his own. There are, 
moreover, good grounds for believing the general tradition of antiquity, 
that Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, was not a native of the country 
in which he acquired such extraordinary honour, but of the Ionic island 
of Samos, and that he migrated to Italy when Samos fell under the 
tyrannical dominion of Polycrates; which migration is placed, with 
much probability, in Olymp. 62. 4. b. c. 529. J Considering the dif- 
ferent characters and dispositions of the Hellenic races, it was natural 
that philosophy, which seeks to give independence to the mind, and to 
free it from prejudices aiu^'traditions, should always receive its first im- 
pulse from Ionians. Vrhe notion of gaining wisdom by one's own 
efforts was exclusively Ionic ; the Dorians laid greater stress on the tra- 
ditions of their fathers, and their hereditary religion and morality, than 
on their own speculations. It is probable that Pythagoras, before he 
left the Ionic Samos, and came to Italy, was not very different from such 
men as Thales and Anaximander. He had doubtless an inquiring 
mind, and habits of careful observation ; and he probably combined 
with mathematical studies (which made their first steps among the 
Ionians) a knowledge of natural history and of other subjects, which 
he increased by travelling. § Thus Heraclitus not only includes him 
among persons of much knowledge, |j but says of him as follows : " Py- 
thagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, has made more inquiries than any 
other man ; he has acquired wisdom, knowledge, and mischievous re- 

* This appellative is an instance of the limited sense of the name Italia, accord- 
ing; to which it only comprehends the later Bruttii and Calabria. Otherwise the 
Eleatics could not be distinguished from the Italic school. 

t Niebuhr's hypothesis. See his Hist, of Rome, vol. i. p. 165. 244. ed. 2. [p. 158. 
235. Eng. transl. last ed.] 

\ That the ancient chronologists in Cicero de Re Publ. II. 15, fixed 01. 62, 4, as 
the year of the arrival of Pythagoras in Italy, is proved by the context. 01. 62. 1, 
is given as the first year of the reign of Polycrates. Comp. Ch. XIII. § 1 1. 

§ That Pythagoras acquired his wisdom in Egypt cannot be safely inferred from 
Isocrat. Busir. § 30 ; the Busiris being a mere rhetorical and sophistical exercise, in 
which little regard would be paid to historical truth. 

|| See above, § 7. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 2.") 7 

fmcment*." But Bince this Ionic philosopher found himself, on his 

arrival at Croton, among a mixed population of Dorians and Achrean ; 
and since his adherents in the neighbouring Doric states "ere con- 
stantly increasing; it is difficult to say whether tin- opinions and dispo- 
sitions which he had brought with him from Samoa, or the opinions 
and dispositions of the citizens of Croton and the neighbouring cities, 
who received his doctrines, exercised the greater influence upon him. 
Thus much, however, is evident, that speculations upon nature, prompted 
by the mere love of truth, could not be in question ; so that the prin- 
cipal efforts of Pythagoras and his adherents were directed 10 practical 
life, especially to the regulation of political institutions according to ge- 
neral views of the order of human society. There is no doubt that 
Croton, Caulonia, Metapontum, and other cities in Lower Italy, were 
long governed, under the superintendence of Pythagorean socic 
upon aristocratic principles; and that they enjoyed prosperity at home, 
and were formidable, from their strength, to foreign states. And even 
when, after the destruction of Sybaris by the Crotouiats (Olymp. G7. 3. 
B.C. 510.), dissensions between the nobles and the people concerning 
the division of the territory had led to a furious persecution of the Py- 
thagoreans ; yet the times returned when Pythagoreans were again at the. 
head of Italian cities ; for instance, Archytas, the contemporary of Socrates 
and Plato, administered the affairs of Tarcntum with great renown f. 
It appears that the individual influence of Pythagoras was exercised 
by means of lectures, or of sayings uttered in a compressed and sym- 
bolical form, which he communicated only to his friends, or by means 
of the establishment and direction of the Pythagorean associations 
and their peculiar mode of life. For there is no authentic account 
of a single writing of Pythagoras, and no fragment which appears to be 
genuine. The works which have been attributed to Pythagoras, such 
as "the Sacred Discourse" (UpoQ Xoyoc), are chiefly forgeries of those 
Orphic theologers who imitated the Pythagorean manner, and whose 
relation to the genuine Pythagoreans has been explained in a former 
chapter J. The fundamental doctrines of the Pythagorean philosophy; 
viz. that the essence of all things rests upon a numerical relation ; that 
the world subsists by the harmony, or conformity, of its different ele- 
ments ; that numbers are the principle of all that exists; — all these 

* TlvQuyopn; "Mvyjffcc^eu t<r<ro(>wv ",<r>cr l <nv u.\&^uxuv f&uXurrei Tavruv iToiYxretra 

icivnZ (ro$i*v, vrokupu0l/iv, kcckotix,^. Diog. Lacrt. VIII. 6. IffTo^'m, according to thu 
Ionic meaning of the word, is an inquiry founded upon interrogation. 

f It appears that there was a second expulsion of the Pythagoreans from Italy 
after the time of Archytas. Lysis, the P\ thagorean, seems to have gone, in conse- 
quence of it, to Thebes, where he became the teacher of Kpaminondas. The jokes 
about the Pythagoreans and the Uvictyo^ovn;, with their strange and singular mode. 
of life, are not earlier than the middle and new comedy, that is, than the 100th 
Olympiad ; this sort of philosophers did not previously exist in Greece. Mcineke 
Quaest. Seen. I. p. 2 1. See Theocrit, IuVXIY. 5, 

X Ch, 1G. £ 5. 

s 



25S HISTORY OF THE 

must have originated with the master of the school. But the scientific 
development of these doctrines, in works composed in the Doric dia- 
lect (as we find them in the extant fragments of Philolaus, who lived 
about the 90th Olympiad, b.c. 420), belongs to a later period. The 
doctrines so developed are, that the essence of things consists, not, ac- 
cording to the ancient Ionians, in an animate substance, nor, according 
to the more recent Ionians, in a union of mind and matter, but in a 
form dependent upon fixed proportions ; and that the regularity of these 
proportions is itself a principle of production. The doctrines in ques- 
tion derived much support from mathematical studies, which were in- 
troduced by Pythagoras into Italy, and, as is well known, were much 
advanced by him, until they were there first made an important part of 
education. The study of music also promoted the Pythagorean opi- 
nions, in two ways ; theoretically, because the effects of the relations of 
numbers were clearly seen in the power of the notes ; and 'practically, 
because singing to the cithara, as used by the Pythagoreans, seemed 
best fitted to produce that mental repose and harmony of soul which 
the Pythagoreans considered the highest object of education. 



)/ 



CHAPTER XVIII, 



§ 1. High antiquity jA history in Asia; causes of its comparative lateness among 
the Greeks. § 2V Origin of history among the Greeks/ The Ionians, particularly 
the Milesians, took the lead. 6 3. Mythological historians ; Cadmus, Acusilaus. 
§ 4. Extensive geographical knowledge of Hecatasus ; his freer treatment of native 
traditions. § 5. Pherecydes; his genealogical arrangement of traditions and 
history. § 6. Charon; his chronicles of general and special history. § 7. Hel- 
lanicus ; a learned inquirer into mythical and true history. Beginning of chro- 
nological researches. § 8. Xanthus, an acute observe*. Dionysins of Miletus, 
the historian of the Persian wars. § 9. General remarks on the composition and 
style oftKe logographers. 

§ iVTt is a remarkable fact, that a nation so intellectual and culti- 
vated as the Greeks, should have been so long without feeling the want 
of a correct record of its transactions in war and peace. 

From the earliest times the East had its annals and chronicles. 
That Egypt possessed a history ascending to a very remote antiquity, 
not formed of mythological materials, but based upon accurate chrono-. 
logical records, is proved by the extant remains of the work of Mane- 
tho*. The sculptures on buildings, with their explanatory inscriptions, 
afforded a history of the priests and kings, authenticated by names and 
numbers ; and we have still hopes that this will hereafter be completely 
deciphered. The kingdom of Babylon also possessed a very ancient 

* Manetho, high-priest at Heliopolis in Egypt, wrote under Ptolemy Philadel- 
phus (284 b, c) three books of ^gyptiaca, 



LITERATURE OF ANCIEXT GREECE. 

history of its princes; which Berosus imparted to the Greeks*, as 
Manetho did the Egyptian history. Ahasuerus is described, in the 
book of Esther, as causing 1 the benefactors of his throne to be i 
in his chronicle +, which was read to him in nights when lie could not 
sleep. Similar registers were perhaps kept many centuries earlier 
at the courts of Ecbatana and Babylon. The ancient sculptures <»l 
central Asia have likewise the same historical chartfitei as the 
Egypt: they record military expeditions, treaties, pacifications of king- 
doms, and the tributes of subject provinces. From the discoveries 
which have been recently made, it may be expected that many more 
sculptures of this description will be found in different parts of the 
ancient kingdom of Assyria. The early concentration of vast nn 
of men in enormous cities; the despotic form of the government; and 
the great influence exercised by the events of the court upon the weal 
and woe of the entire population, directed the attention of millions to 
one point, and imparted a deep and extensive interest to the journal of 
the monarch's life. Even, however, without these incentives, which 
are peculiar to a despotic form of government, the people of Israel, 
from the early union of its tribes around one sanctuary, and under one 
law, (for the custody of which a numerous priesthood was appointed,) 
recorded and preserved very ancient and venerable historical traditions. 

The difference between these Oriental nations and the Greeks, with 
respect to their care in recording their history, is very great. The 
Greeks evinced a careless and almost infantine indifference about the 
registering of passing events, almost to the time when they became one. 
of the great nations of the world, and waged mighty wars with the 
ancient kingdoms of the East. The celebration of a by- gone age, 
which imagination had decked with all its charms, engrossed the atten- 
tion of the Greeks, and prevented it from dwelling on more recent 
events. The division of the nation into numerous small states, and the 
republican form of the governments, prevented a concentration of interest 
on particular events and persons ; the attention to domestic affairs was con- 
fined within a narrow circle, the objects of which changed with every ge- 
neration. No action, no event, before the great conflict between Greece 
and Persia, could be compared in interest with those great exploits of 
the mythical age, in which heroes from all parts of Greece were sup- 
posed to have borne a part; certainly none made so pleasing an im- 
pression upon all hearers. The Greeks required that a work read in 
public, and designed for general instruction and entertainment, should 
impart unmixed pleasure to the mind ; but, owing to the dissensions 
between the Greek republics, their historical traditions could not but 
offend some, if they flattered others. In short, it was not till a late pe- 

* Berosus of Chaldaea wrote under Antiochus Theos (2G2 n.c.) a work called 
Babylonica or Chaldaica. 
f BarAiKci) hffycer, from which Ctesias derived information, Diod. II. 

^ 9 



260 HISTORY OF THE 

riod that the Greeks outgrew their poetical mythology, and considered 
contemporary events as worthy of being- thought of and written about. 
From this cause, the history of many transactions prior to the Persian 
war has perished; but, without its influence, Greek literature could 
never have become what it was. Greek poetry, by its purely fictitious 
character, and its freedom from the shackles of particular truth, ac- 
quired that general probability, on account of which Aristotle considers 
poetry as more philosophical than history*. Greek art, likewise, from 
the lateness of the period at which it descended from the ideal repre- 
sentation of gods and heroes to the portraits of real men, acquired a 
nobleness and beauty of form which it could never have otherwise 
attained. And, in fine, the intellectual culture of the Greeks in general 
would not have taken its liberal and elevated turn, if it had not rested 
on a poetical basis. 

§ 2. Writing was probably known in Greece some centuries before 
the time of Cadmus of Miletus t, the earliest Greek historian; but it 
had not been employed for the purpose of preserving any detailed his- 
torical record. The lists of the Olympic victors, and of the kings of 
Sparta and the prytanes of Corinth, which the Alexandrian critics con- 
sidered sufficiently authentic to serve as the foundation of the early 
Greek chronology ; ancient treaties and other contracts,' which it was 
important to perpetuate in precise terms; determinations of boundaries, 
and other records of a like description, formed the first rudiments of a 
documentary history. Yet this was still very remote from a detailed 
chronicle of contemporary events. And even when, towards the end of 
the age of the Seven Sages, some writers of historical narratives in 
prose began to appear among the Ionians and the other Greeks, they 
did not select domestic and recent events. Instead of this, they began 
with accounts of distant times and countries, and gradually narrowed 
their view to a history of the Greeks of recent times. So entirely did 
the ancient Greeks believe that the daily discussion of common life 
and oral tradition were sufficient records of the .events of their own 
time and country. 

The Ionians, who throughout this period were the daring innovators 
and indefatigable discoverers in the field of intellect, took the lead in 
history. They were also the first, who, satiated with the childish amuse- 
ment of mythology, began to turn their keen and restless eyes on all 
sides, and to seek new matter for thought and composition. The 
Ionians had a peculiar delight in varied and continuous narration. 
Nor is it to be overlooked, that the first Ionian who is mentioned as a 
historian, was a Milesian. Miletus, the birth-place of the earliest phi- 
losophers; flourishing by its industry and commerce ; the centre of the 
political movements produced by the spirit of Ionian independence ; and 
the spot in which the native dialect was first formed into written Greek 
* Aristot, Poet. 9. f See above, ch. 4. § 5, 



LITEIUTURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. I 

prose; was evidently fitted to be the cradle of historical composition in 
Greece. If the Milesians had not, together with their neighbour* of 
Asia Minor, led a life of too luxurious enjoyment; if they had known 
how to retain the severe manners and manly character of the ancient 
Greeks, in the midst of the refinements and excitements of later in 
it is probable that Miletus, and not Athens, would have been the 
teacher of the world. 

§ 3. Cadmus of Miletus is mentioned as the earliest historian, and, 
together with Pherecydes of Syros, as the earliest writer of prose. His 
date cannot be placed much before the 60th Olympiad, b. c. 540*; he 
wrote' a history of the foundation of Miletus (Kr/o-tc MiAz/rou), which 
embraced the whole of Ionia. The subject of this history lay in the 
dim period, from which only a few oral traditions of an historical kind, 
but intimately connected with mythical notions, had been preserved. 
The genuine work of Cadmus seems to have been early lost; the book 
which bore his name in the time of Dionysius (that is, the Augustan 
age) was considered a forgery f. 

The next historian, in order of time, to Cadmus, was Acusilaus 
of Argos. Although by descent a Dorian, he wrote his history in 
the Ionic dialect, because the lonians were the founders of the his- 
torical style : a practice universally followed in Greek literature. Acu- 
silaus confined his attention to the mythical period. His object was 
to collect into a short and connected narrative all the events from the 
formation of chaos to the end of the Trojan war. It was said of him 
that he translated Hesiod into prose J : an expression which serves to 
characterise his work. He appears, however, to have related many 
legends differently from Hesiod, and in the tone of the Orphic theo- 
logers of his own time §. He seems to have written nothing which can 
properly be called history. 

§ 4. Hecatjeus of Miletus, the Ionian, was of a very different 
character of mind. With regard to his date, we know that he was a 
man of great consideration at the time when the lonians wished to 
attempt a revolt against the Persians under Darius (Olymp. 69. 2. B.C. 
. 503). At that time he came forward in the council of Aristngoras, 
and dissuaded the undertaking, enumerating the nations which were 
subject to the Persian king, and all his warlike forces. But if they 
determined to revolt, he advised them to endeavour, above all things, 
to maintain the sea by a large fleet, and for this purpose to take the 

^* See Clinton, F. H. Vol. II. p. 368, sqq. 

I^f Concerning Xanthus and all the following historians, see the paper " On certain 
early Greek historians mentioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus,'' in the Museum 
Criiicum, Vol. I. p. 80. 216; Vol. II. p. 90. 
J Clem. Alex. Strom, vi. p. 629 A. 

§ Ch. xvi. § 4, note. For the fragments of Acusilaus see Sturz's edition of Phe- 
recydes. 



9Q>2 HISTORY OF THE 

treasures from the temple of Branchidse*. This advice proves Hecataeus 
to have been a prudent and sagacious man, who understood the true 
situation of things. Hecataeus did not share the prevalent interest about 
the primitive history of his nation, and still less had he the infantine 
and undoubting faith which was exhibited by the Argive Acusilaus. He 
says, in an extant fragment f — " Thus says Hecataeus the Milesian : 
these things I write, as they seem to me to be true ; for the stories of 
the Greeks are manifold and ludicrous, as it appears to me." He also 
shows traces of that perverse system of interpretation which seeks to 
transmute the marvels of fable into natural events; as, for example, 
he explained Cerberus as a serpent which inhabited the promontory of 
Taenarum. But his attention was peculiarly directed to passing events 
and the nature of the countries and kingdoms with which Greece began 
to entertain intimate relations. He had travelled much, like Herodotus, 
and had in particular collected much information about Egypt. Hero- 
dotus often corrects his statements ; but by so doing he recognises 
Hecataeus as the most important of his predecessors. Hecataeus per- 
petuated the results of his geographical and ethnographical researches 
in a work entitled " Travels round the Earth" (TLepiodog yf/g), by which 
a description of the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and of southern 
Asia as far as India was understood. The author began with Greece, 
proceeding in a book, entitled " Europe'' to the west, and in another, 
entitled "Asia," to the east |. Hecataeus also improved and com- 
pleted the map of the earth sketched by Anaximander § ; it must have 
been this map which Aristagoras of Miletus brought to Sparta before 
the Ionian revolt, and upon which he showed the king of Sparta the 
countries, rivers, and principal cities of the East. Besides this work, 
another is ascribed to Hecataeus, which is sometimes called " His- 
tories," sometimes "Genealogies;" and of which four books are cited. 
Into this work, Hecataeus admitted many of the genealogical legends 
of the Greeks; and, notwithstanding his contempt for old fables, he 
laid great stress upon genealogies ascending to the mythological pe- 
riod ; thus he made a pedigree for himself, in which his sixteenth an- 
cestor was a god ||. Genealogies would afford opportunities for intro- 
ducing accounts of different periods; and Hecataeus certainly narrated 



* Herod, v. 36, who calls him 'EzaraTo; o XcyoToio;. The times of the birth and 
death of Hecataeus are fixed with less certainty at Olymp. 57. and Olymp. 75. 4. 

f See Demetr. de Elocut. § 12. Historicorum Graec. Antiq. Fragmenta, coll. F. 
Creuzer, p. 15. 

I Three hundred and thirty-one fragments of this work are collected in Hecat^i 
Milesii fragmenta ed. R. H. Klausen. Berolini, 1830. It appears in some cases to 
have received additions since its first publication, as was commonly the case with 
manuals of this kind. Thus Hecataeus Fr. 27. mentions Capua, which name, ac- 
cording to Livy, was given to Vultumum in A.U.C. 315 (b.c. 447). 

o This is certain from Agathemerus I. 1. 

II Herod. II. 143. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GRED 

many historical events in this work", although he did not wri(e a 
nected history of the period comprised in it. He cat Bit* wrote in the 
pure Ionic dialect; his style had great simplicity, and was sometim. » 
animated, from the vividness of his descriptions f. 

§ 5. Pherecydes also wrole on genealogies and mythical history, 
but did not extend his labours to geography and ethnography. He 
was born at Leros, a small island near Miletus, and afterwards went to 
Athens; whence he is sometimes called a Lerian, sometimes an Athe- 
nian. He flourished about the time of the Persian war. His writings 
comprehended a great portion of the mythical traditions; and, in parti- 
cular, he gave a copious account, in a separate work, of the ancient 
times of Athens. He was much consulted by the later mythographers, 
and his numerous fragments must still serve as the basis of many 
mythological inquiries J. By following a genealogical line he was led 
from Philaeus, the son of Ajax, down to Miltiades, the founder of the 
sovereignty in the Chersonesus ; he thus found an opportunity of de- 
scribing the campaign of Darius against the Scythians; concerning 
which we have a valuable fragment of his history. 

§ 6. Charon, a native of Lampsacus, a Milesian colony, also belongs 
to this generation §, although he mentioned some events which fell in the 
beginning of the reign of Artaxerxes, Olymp. 78. 4. b.c. 465 ||. Cha- 
ron continued the researches of Hecata?us into eastern ethnography. 
He wrote (as was the custom of these ancient historians) separate 
works upon Persia, Libya, Ethiopia, &c. He also subjoined the his- 
tory of his own time, and he preceded Herodotus in narrating the 
events of the Persian war, although Herodotus nowhere mentions 
him. From the fragments of his writings which remain, it is manifest 
that his relation to Herodotus was that of a dry chronicler to a histo- 
rian, under whose hands everything acquires life and character ^[. 
Charon'wrote besides a chronicle ** of his own country, as several of the 
early historians did, who were thence called horotjraphers. Probably 

* As that in Herod. VI. 137. 

f As in the fragment from Longinus de Sublim. 27. Creuzer. Hist. Ant. fr. 
p. 54. 

I Sturz Pherecydis fragments, ed. altera. Lips. 1824. Whether the ten books 
cited by the ancients were published by Pherecydes himself in this order, or whether 
they were not separate short treatises of Pherecydes which had been collected by 
later editors and arranged as parts of one work, seems doubtful and difficult of in- 
vestigation. 

§ Dionysius Halic. de Thucyd. jud. 5. p. 818. Reiske places (baron with \ 
silaus, Hecat&ui, and others, among the early ; Ilellanicus, Xauthus, and othferi, 
among the more recent predecessors of Thucydides. 

II Plutarch. Themist. 27. 

% Charon's fragments are collected in Creuzer, ibid, pi B9, sq. 
»* v Clooi, corresponding to the Latin aiffto/<r«,btJtfhf not to be confounded with »#»/, 
termini, /imites. See Schweighamser ad Athen. XL p. 473 1). ML fctt 1). 



261 HISTORY OF THE 

most of the ancient historians, whose names are enumerated by Diony- 
sius of Halicarnassus, belonged to this class *. 

§ 7. Hellanicus of Mytilene was almost a contemporary of He- 
rodotus ; we know that at the beginning- of the Peloponnesian war he 
was 65 years oldf, and still continued to write. The character of 
Hellanicus as a mythographer and historian is essentially different 
from that of the early chroniclers, such as Acusilaus and Pherecydes ; 
he has far more the character of a learned compiler, whose object is, 
not merely to note down events, but to arrange his materials and to 
correct the errors of others. Besides a number of writings upon parti- 
cular legends and local fables, x he composed a work entitled " the 
Priestesses of Here of Argos;" in which the women who had filled 
this priesthood were enumerated up to a very remote period (on no 
better authority than of certain obscure traditions), and various striking 
events of the heroic time were arranged in chronological order, accord- 
ing to this series. Hellanicus could hardly have been the first who 
ventured to make a list of this kind, and to dress it up with chrono- 
logical dates. Before his time the priests and temple-attendants at 
Argos had perhaps employed their idle hours in compiling a series of 
the priestesses of Here, and in explaining it by monuments supposed 
to be of great antiquity }. The Ccmwonicce of Hellanicus would be of 
more importance for our immediate purpose, as it contained a list of 
the victors in the musical and poetical contests of the Carnea at Sparta 
(from Olymp. 26. b. c. 676) §, and was therefore one of the first at- 
tempts at literary history. The writings of Hellanicus contained a 
vast mass of matter; since, besides the works already mentioned, he 
wrote accounts of Phoenicia, Persia, and Egypt, and also a description 
of a journey to the renowned oracle of Zeus-Ammon in the desert of 
Libya" (the genuineness of which last work was however doubted). 
He also descended to the history of his own time, and described some 
of the events between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, but briefly, 
and without chronological accuracy, according to the reproach of Thu- 
cydides. 

§ 8. Among the contemporaries of Hellanicus was (according to the 
statement of Dionysius) Xanthus, the son of Candaules of Sardis, a 
Lydian, but one who had received a Greek education. His work 

* Eugeon of Samos (above Ch. XI. § 16), Deiochus of Proconnesus, Eudemusof 
Paros, Democles of Phigalia, Amelesagoras of Chalcedon (or Athens). 

f The learned Pamphila in Gellius N. A. XV. 23. 

\ Instances of similar catalogues of priests (in the concoction of which some 
pious fraud must have been employed) are the genealogy of the Butads. which was 
painted up in the temple of Athene Polias (Pausan. I. 26. 6. Plutarch X. Orat. 7.), 
and which doubtless ascended to the ancient hero Butes; and the line of the priests 
of Poseidon at Halicarnassus, which begins with a son of Poseidon himself, in 
Boeckh. Corp. Inscript. Gr. No. 2655 

§ See Ch XII. § 2. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT fiREECE. 205 

upon Lydia, written in the Ionic dialect, hears, in the few fragment! 
which remain, the stamp of high excellence. Some valuable remarki 

upon the nature of the earth's surface in Asia Minor, which pointed 
partly to volcanic agency, and partly to the extension of the sen ; and 
precise accounts of the distinctions between the Lydian races, are cited 
from it by Strabo and Dionysius *. The passages quoted by t] 
writers bear unquestionable marks of genuineness; in later times, 
however, some spurious works were attributed to Xanthus. In parti- 
cular, a work upon magic, which passed current under his name, and 
which treated of the religion and worship of Zoroaster, was indubi- 
tably a recent forgery. 

A still greater uncertainty prevails with respect to the writings of 
Dionysius of Miletus, inasmuch as the ancient writer of this name 
was confounded by the Greek critics themselves with a much later 
writer on mythology. It is certain that the Dionysius, whom Di odor us 
follows in his account of the Greek heroic age, belongs to the times of 
learning and historical systems; he turns the whole heroic mythology 
into an historical romance, in which great princes, captains, sages, and 
benefactors of mankind take the places of the ancient heroes t. Of the 
works which appear to belong to the ancient Dionysius, viz. the Per- 
sian histories and the events after Darius (probably a continuation of 
the former), nothing precise is known. 

§ 9. To the Greek historians before Herodotus modern scholars have 
given the common name of logo gr ciphers, which is applied by Thucydidcs 
to his predecessors. This term, however, had not so limited a meaning 
among the ancients ; as logos signified any discourse in prose. Accord- 
ingly, the Athenians gave the same name to writers of speeches, i.e. per- 
sons who composed speeches for others, to be used in courts of justice. 
It is however convenient to comprehend these ancient Greek chro- 
niclers under a common name, since they had in many respects a 
common character. All were alike animated by a desire of recording, 
for the instruction and entertainment of their contemporaries, the ac- 
counts which they had heard or collected. But they did this, without 
attempting, by ingenuity of arrangement or beauty of style, to produce 
such an impression as had been made by works of poetry. The first 
Greek to whom it occurred that fiction was not necessary for this pur- 
pose, and that a narrative of true facts might be made intensely inte- 
resting, was Herodotus, the Homer of history. 

* The fragments in Crcuzer ubi sup. p. 135, Bqq. 

f Whether this Dionysius is the Dionysius of Samos cited by Ailn-nirus. who 
wrote concerning the cyclus, or Dionysius Scytobrachion c i' Mytiline, DAI Dot been 

completely determined. 



266 HISTORY OF THE 



CHAPTER XIX. 

4 

§ 1. Events of the life of Herodotus. § 2. His travels. § 3. Gradual formation of 
his work. § 4. lis plan. § 5. Its leading ideas. § 6. Defects and excellencies 
of his historical researches. § 7. Style of his narrative ; character of his lan- 
guage. 



§ 1. Herodotus, the son of Lyxes, was, according to a statement of 
good authority*, born in Olymp. 74. 1. B.C. 484, in the period be- 
tween the first and second Persian wars. His family was one of the 
most distinguished in the Doric colony of Halicarnassus, and thus be- 
came involved in the civil commotions of the city. Halicarnassus was 
at that time governed by the family of Artemisia, the princess who 
fought so bravely for the Persians in the battle of Salamis, that Xerxes 
declared that she was the -only man among many women. Lygdamis, 
the son of Pisindelis, and grandson of Artemisia, was hostile to the 
family of Herodotus. He killed Panyasis, who was probably the ma- 
ternal uncle of Herodotus, and who will be mentioned hereafter as one 
of the restorers of epic poetry^ and he obliged Herodotus himself to 
take refuge abroad. His flight must have taken place about the 82nd 
Olympiad, B.C. 452. y^ 

Herodotus repaired to Samos, the Ionic island, where probably some 
of his kinsmen resided f. Samos must be looked upon as the second 
home of Herodotus ; in many passages of his work he shows a minute 
acquaintance with this island and its inhabitants, and he seems to take 
a pleasure in incidentally mentioning the part played by it in events of 
importance. It must have been in Samos that Herodotus imbibed the 
Ionic spirit which pervades his history. Herodotus likewise under- 
took from Samos the liberation of his native city from the yoke of Lyg- 
damis ; and he succeeded in the attempt ; but the contest between the 
nobles and the commons having placed obstacles in the way of his 
well-intentioned plans, he once more forsook his native city. 

Herodotus passed the latter years of his life at Thurii, the great 
Grecian settlement in Italy, to which so many distinguished men had 
intrusted their fortunes. It does not however follow from this account 
that Herodotus was among the first settlers of Thurii; the numbers of 
the original colonists doubtless received subsequent additions. It is 
certain that Herodotus did not go to Thurii till after the beginning of 
the Peloponnesian war; since at the beginning of it he must have been 
at Athens. He describes a sacred offering, which was on the Acropolis 
of Athens, by its position with regard to the Propylsea % ; now the Pro- 
pylaea were not finished till the year in which the Peloponnesian war 
began. Herodotus likewise evidently appears to adopt those views of 

* Of Pamphila in Gellius N. A. XV. 23. 

f Panyasis too is called a Samian. I Herod. V. 77. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 2G7 

the relations between the Greek states, which were diffused in Athens 
by the statesmen of the party of Pericles; and he states his opinion 
that Athens did not deserve, after her great exploits in the Persian 
war, to be so envied and blamed by the rest of the Greeks ; which 
the case just at the beginning- of the Peloponnesian war*. 
'Herodotus settled quietly in Thurii, and devoted the leisure of hi , 
latter years entirely to his work. Hence he is frequently called by the 
ancients a Thurian, in reference to the composition of his history. 

§ 2. In this short review of the life of Herodotus we have taken no 
notice of his travels, which are intimately connected with his literary 
labours. Herodotus did not visit different countries from the accidents 
of commercial business or political missions; his travels were under- 
taken from the pure spirit of Inquiry, and for that age they were 
very extensive and important. Herodotus visited Egypt as high up ;is 
Elephantine, Libya, at least as far as the vicinity of Cyrene, Phoeni- 
cia, Babylon, and probably also Persia; the Greek states on the Cim- 
merian Bosporus, the contiguous country of the Scythians, as well as 
Colchis; besides which, he had resided in several states of Greece and 
Lower Italy, and had visited many of the temples, even the remote one 
ofDodona. The circumstance of his being, in his capacity of Ilali- 
carnassian, a subject of the king of Persia, must have assisted him 
materially in these travels ; an Athenian, or a Greek of any of the 
states which were in open revolt against Persia, would have been 
treated as an enemy, and sold as a slave. Hence it may be inferred 
that the travels of Herodotus, at least those to Egypt and Asia, were 
performed from Halicarnassus in his youth. 

Herodotus, of course, made these inquiries with the view of impart- 
ing their results to his countrymen. But it is uncertain whether he 
had at that time formed the plan of connecting his information con- 
cerning Asia and Greece with the history of the Persian war, and 
of uniting the whole into one great work. When we consider that 
an intricate and extensive plan of this sort had hitherto been un- 
known in the historical writings of the Greeks, it can scarcely be 
doubted that the idea occurred to him at an advanced stage of his 
inquiries, and that in his earlier years he had not raised his mind 
above the conception of such works as those of Hecatseus, Charon, and 
others of his predecessors and contemporaries. Even at a later period 
of his life, when he was composing his great work, he contemplated 
writing a separate book upon Assyria (Aavvfjim \6yo*) ; and it Mem-, 
that this book was in existence at the time of Aristotle*. In fact, 
Herodotus might also have made separate books out o( the accounl 

* Compare Herod. VII. 139. with Time. II. 8. 

•j- Aristotle, Hist. An. VIII. 18. mentions the account of the liege of Nineveh In 
Herodotus (for, although the manuscripts generally read He nod, Herodotut is evi- 
dently the more suitable name) ; that is, undoubtedly, the siege which Herodol 
106. promises to describe in his separate work on Assyria (comp. I. 1 



268 HISTORY OF THE 

Egypt, Persia, and Scythia given in his history ; and he would, no 
doubt, have done so, if he had been content to tread in the footsteps of 
the logographers who preceded him. 

§ 3. It is stated that Herodotus recited his history at different festi- 
vals. This statement is, in itself, perfectly credible, as the Greeks of 
this time, when they had finished a composition with care, and had 
given it an attractive form, reckoned more upon oral delivery than upon 
solitary reading. Thucydides, blaming the historians who preceded 
him, describes them as courting the transient applause of an audi- 
ence*. The ancient chronologists have also preserved the exact date 
of a recitation, which took place at the great Panathenaea at Athens, 
in Olymp. S3. 3. b. c. 446 (when Herodotus was 38 years old). The 
collections of Athenian decrees contained a decree proposed by Anytus 
(•J/ijfKTfia 'Arvrov), from which it appeared that Herodotus received a 
reward often talents from the public treasury)'. There is less autho- 
rity for the story of a recitation at Olympia ; and least authority of all 
for the well-known anecdote, that Thucydides was present at it as a 
boy, and that he shed tears, drawn forth by his own intense desire for 
knowledge, and his deep interest in the narrative. To say nothing of 
the many intrinsic improbabilities of this story, so many anecdotes were 
invented by the ancients in order to bring eminent men of the same 
pursuits into connexion with each other, that «it is impossible to give 
any faith to it, without the testimony of more trustworthy witnesses. 

The public readings of Herodotus (such as that at the Panathenaic 
festival) must have been confined to detached portions of his subject, 
which he afterwards introduced into his work; for example, the history 
and description of Egypt, or the accounts concerning Persia. His 
great historical work could not have been composed till the time of the 
Peloponnesian war. Indeed, his history, and particularly the four 
last books, are so full of references and allusions to events which oc- 
curred in the first period of the war J, that he appears to have been 
diligently occupied with the composition or final revision of it at this 
time. It is however very questionable whether Herodotus lived into 
the second period of the Peloponnesian war§. At all events, he must 
have been occupied with his work till his death, for it seems to be in 

* Thucyd. 1.21. 

f Plutarch de Malign. Herod. 26. 

I As the expulsion of the iEginetans, the surprise of Platsea, the Archidamian 
war, and other events. The passages of Herodotus which could not have been 
written before this time are, III. 160. VI. 91. 93. VII. 137. 233. IX. 73. 

6 The passage in IX. 73. which states that the Lacedaemonians, in their devas- 
tations of Attica, always spared Decelea and kept at a distance from it (AsxzXtn; 
uvrixttrtai), cannot be reconciled with the siege of Decelea by Agis in Olymp. 91. 3. 
B.C. 413. The passages VI. 98. and VII. 170. also contain marks of having been 
written before this time. On the other hand, the passage I. 130. appears to refer 
to the insurrection of the Medes in Olymp. 93. 1. b. c. 408. (Xen. Hell. I. 2. 19.) : 
on this supposition, however, it is strange that Herodotus should have called Darius 
Nothus by the simple name Darius without any distinctive adjunct. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GUI 0<i!> 

an unfinished state. TRereisno obvious 'reason why Herodotus should 

have carried down the war between the Greeks and Persians to the taking 
of Sestos, without mentioning any subsequent event of it* Besid< 

one place he promises to give the particulars of an Occurrence in a 
future part of his work t ; a promise which is nowhere fulfilled. 

§ 4. The plan of the work of Herodotus is formed Upon a notion, 
which, though it cannot in strictness be called true, was very cur- 
rent in his time, and had even been developed, after their fashion, by 
the learned of Persia and Phoenicia, who were not unacquainted with 
Greek mythology. The notion is that of an ancient enmity between 
the Greeks and the nations of Asia. The learned of the East consi- 
dered (he rapes of Jo, Medea, and Helen, and the wars which grew 
out of those events, as single acts of this great conflict ; and their main 
object was to determine which of the two parties had first used violence 
against the other. Herodotus, however, soon drops these stories of 
old times, and turns to a prince whom he knows to have been the ag- 
gressor in his war against the Greeks. This is Croesus, king of Lydia. 
He then proceeds to give a detailed account of the enterprises of Croe- 
sus and the other events of his life; into which are interwoven as epi- 
sodes, not only the early history of the Lydian kings and of their 
conflicts with the Greeks, but also some important passages in the 
history of the Greek states, particularly Athens and Sparta. In this 
manner Herodotus, in describing the first subjugation of the Greeks 
by an Asiatic power, at the same time points out the origin and pro- 
gress of those states by which the Greeks were one day to be liberated. 
Meanwhile, the attack of Sardis by Cyrus brings the Persian power on 
the stage in the place of the Lydian; and the narrative proceeds to 
explain the rise of the Persian from the Median kingdom, and to de- 
scribe its increase by the subjugation of the nations of Asia Minor and 
the Babylonians. Whenever the Persians come in contact with other 
nations, an account, more or less detailed, is given of their history and 
peculiar usages. Herodotus evidently, as indeed he himself confesses J, 
strives to enlarge his plan by episodes; it is manifestly his object to 
combine with the history of the conflict between the East and West a 
vivid picture of the contending nations. Thus to the conquest of Egypt 
by Cambyses (Book II.) he annexes a description of the country, . Un- 
people, and their history; the copiousness of which was caused by his 
fondness for Egypt, on account of its early civilization, and the Bta- 

* It may, however, be urged against this view, that the secession of the Spartans 
and their allies, the formation of the alliance under the supremacy of Athens, and 
the change in the character of the war from defensive to offensive, made the Uking 
of Sestos a distinctly marked epoch. See Thncyd. I. 89, 

f Herod. VII. 213. 

I Herod. IV. 30. Thus he speaks of the Libyans in the 4th book, on; . 
he thinks that the expedition of the Satrap Aryandes against Btrcs WSJ m feci di- 
rected agaiust all the nations of Libya. See IV. 107. 



270 HISTORY OF THE 

bility of its peculiar institutions and usages. The history of Cambyses, 
of the false Smerdis, and of Darius, is continued in the same detailed 
manner (Book III.) ; and an account is given of the power of Samos, 
under Polycrates, and of his tragical end ; by which the Persian power 
began to extend to the islands between Asia and Europe. The institu- 
tions established by Darius at the beginning of his reign afford an op- 
portunity of surveying the whole kingdom of Persia, with all its pro- 
vinces, and their large revenues. With the expedition of Darius 
against the Scythians (which Herodotus evidently considers as a reta- 
liation for the former incursions of the Scythians into Asia) the Per- 
sian power begins to spread over Europe (Book IV.). Herodotus 
then gives a full account of the north of Europe, of which his know- 
ledge was manifestly much more extensive than that of Hecataeus ; and 
he next relates the great expedition of the Persian army, which, 
although it did not endanger the freedom of the Scythians, first opened 
a passage into Europe to the Persians. The kingdom of Persia now 
stretches on one side to Scythia, on the other over Egypt to Cyrenaica. 
A Persian army is called in by Queen Pheretime against the Bar- 
caeans ; which gives Herodotus an opportunity of relating the history 
of Cyrene, and describing the Libyan nations, as an interesting compa- 
nion to his description of the nations of northern Europe. While 
(Book V.) a part of the Persian army, which had remained behind 
after the Scythian expedition, reduces a portion of the Thracians and 
the little kingdom of Macedonia under the power of the great king, 
the great Ionian revolt arises from causes connected with the Scythian 
expedition, which brings still closer the decisive struggle between 
Greece and Persia. Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, seeks aid in 
Sparta and Athens for the Ionians; whereupon the historian takes oc- 
casion to continue the history of these and other Greek states, from the 
point where he had left it (Book I.) ; and in particular to describe the 
rapid rise of the Athenians, after they had thrown off the yoke of the 
Pisistratids. The enterprising spirit of the young republic of Athens 
is also shown in the interest taken by it in the Ionian revolt, which was 
begun in a rash and inconsiderate manner, and, having been carried on 
without sufficient vigour, terminated in a complete defeat (Book VI.). 
Herodotus next pursues the constantly increasing causes of enmity 
between Greece and Persia; among which is the flight of the Spartan 
king Demaratus to Darius. To this event he annexes a detailed ex- 
planation of the relations and enmities of the Greek states, in the period 
just preceding the first Persian war. The expedition against Eretria 
and Athens was the first blow struck by Persia at the mother country 
of Greece, and the battle of Marathon was the first glorious signal that 
this Asiatic power, hitherto unchecked in its encroachments, was there 
at length to find a limit. From this point the narrative runs in a re- 
gular channel, and pursues to the end the natural course of events ; the 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT OREM 

preparations for war, the movements of the army, and the- cam] 
against Greece itself (Rook VII.). Even here, however, the nan 

moves at a slow pace; and thus keeps the expectation upon tl, 
The rnarch and mustering of the Persian army give full time 
opportunity for forming a distinct and complete notion of its enorn 
force; and the negotiations of the (neck stales afford an equallj clear 

conception of their jealousies and dissensions; facta which make the 
ultimate issue of the contest appear the more astonishing. Alter the 
preliminary and undecisive battles of Thermopylae and Axtemisium 
(Book VIII.), comes the decisive battle of Salaniis, which is described 
with the greatest vividness and animation. This is followed (in Book 
IX.) by the battle of Plataea, drawn witli the same distinctness, parti- 
cularly as regards all its antecedents and circnmstanccs; together with 
the contemporaneous battle of Mycale and the other measures of the 
Greeks for turning their victory to account. Although the work ft 
unfinished, it concludes with a sentiment which cannot have hem 
placed casually at the end; viz. that (as the great Cyrus was stipp. 
to have said) "It is not always the richest and most fertile country 
which produces the most valiant men." 

§ 5. In this manner Herodotus gives a certain unity to his history; 
and, notwithstanding the extent of his subject, which comprehends 
nearly all the nations of the world at that time known, the narrative is 
constantly advancing. The history of Herodotus has an epic character, 
not only from the equable and uninterrupted flow of the narrative, but 
also from certain pervading ideas, which give an uniform tone t.. 
whole. The principal of these is the idea of a fixed destiny, of a wise 
arrangement of the world, which has prescribed to every being his 
path ; and which allots ruin and destruction, not only to crime and vio- 
lence, but to excessive power and riches, and the overweening pride 
which is their companion. In this consists the envy of Ih 
tCov 0twv), so often mentioned by Herodotus; by the other (ii, 
usually called the divine Nemesis. He constantly adverts, in his nar- 
rative, to the influence of this divine power, the Dccmonion, as hi 
calls it. Thus he shows how the deity visits the sins of the sneet 
upon their descendants; how the human mind is blinded by arrog 
and recklessness ; how man rushes, as it were, wilfully upon his own 
destruction ; and how oracles, which ought to he warning voic< 
violence and insolence, mislead from their ambiguity, when interpn 
by blind passion. Besides the historical narrative itself, the 
speeches serve rather to enforce certain general ideas, particularly con- 
cerning the envy of the gods and the danger of pride, than to chat 
terise the dispositions, views, and modes of thought of the person 
presented as speaking. In fact, these speeches are rather the 
than the dramatic part of the history of Herodotus; and if we com] 
it with the different parts of a Greek tragedy, they correspond, nut to the 



27:2 history of the 

dialoguie, but to the choral songs. Herodotus lastly shows his awe of 
the divine Nemesis by his moderation and the firmness with which he 
keeps down the ebullitions of national pride. For, if the eastern 
princes by their own rashness bring destruction upon themselves, and 
the Greeks remain the victors, yet he describes the East, with its early 
civilization, as highly worthy of respect and admiration ; he even points 
out traits of greatness of character in the hostile kings of Persia ; 
shows his countrymen how they often owed their successes to divine 
providence and external advantages, rather than to their own valour 
and ability; and, on the whole, is anything hut a panegyrist of the 
exploits of the Greeks. So little indeed has he this character, that 
when the rhetorical historians of later times had introduced a more pre- 
tending account of these events, the simple, faithful, and impartial 
Herodotus was reproached with being actuated by a spirit of calumny, 
and with seeking to detract from the heroic acts of his countrymen*. 

§ 6. Since Herodotus saw the working of a divine agency in all hu- 
man events, and considered the exhibition of it as the main object of 
his history, his aim is entirely different from that of a historian who 
regards the events of life merely with reference to man. Herodotus 
is, in truth, a theologian and a poet as well as an historian. The in- 
dividual parts of his work are treated entirely in this spirit. His aim 
is not merely to give the results of common experience in human life. 
His mind is turned to the extraordinary and the marvellous. In this 
respect his work bears an uniform colour. The great events which he 
relates — the gigantic enterprises of princes, the unexpected turns of 
fortune, and other marvellous occurrences — harmonise with the accounts 
of the astonishing buildings and other works of the East, of the multi- 
farious and often singular manners of the different nations, the sur- 
prising phenomena of nature, and the rare productions and animals of 
the remote regions of the world. Herodotus presented a picture of 
strange and astonishing things to his mobile and curious countrymen. 
It were vain to deny that Herodotus, when he does not describe things 
which he had himself observed, was often deceived by the misrepresent- 
ations of priests, interpreters, and guides; and, above all, by that 
propensity to boasting and that love of the marvellous which are so 
common in the East f. Yet, without his singlehearted simplicity, his 
disposition to listen to every remarkable account, and his admiration 
(undisturbed by the national prejudices of a Greek) for the wonders of 
the Eastern world, Herodotus Would never have imparted to us many 
valuable accounts, in which recent inquirers have discovered substantial 
truth, though mixed with fable. How often have modern travellers, 

* Plutarch's Treatise vnfi rni 'H^lrov x,axonhu&$ t concerning the malignity of 
Herodotus. 

f Aristotle, in his Treatise on the Generation of Animals, III, 5, calls him 
'Hoohro; 6 (Avhxiyosy H Herodotus the story-teller." 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT ORI 

naturalists, and geographers, had occasion to admire the truth and 
rcctness of the observations and information which are contained in 

the seemingly marvellous narratives of Herodotus! It is fortunate 
that he was guided by the maxim which he mentions in his account of 
the circumnavigation of Africa in the reign of Necho. Ilnvinu ex- 
pressed his disbelief of the statement that the sailors had the sun <»n 
their right hand, he adds : " I must say what has been told to me ; but 
I need not therefore believe all, and this remark applies to my whole 
work." 

Herodotus must have completely familiarised himself with the man- 
ners and modes of thought of the Oriental nations. The character of 
his mind and his style of composition also resemble the Oriental type 
more than those of any other Greek ; and accordingly his thoughts and 
expressions often remind us of the writings of the Old Testament. It 
cannot indeed be denied that he has sometimes attributed to the eastern 
princes ideas which were essentially Greek ; as, for example, when 
he makes the seven grandees of the Persians deliberate upon the re- 
spective advantages of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy *. But, 
on the whole, Herodotus seizes the character of an Oriental monarch, 
like -Xerxes, with striking truth ; and transports us into the very midst 
of the satellites of a Persian despot. It would be more just to reproach 
Herodotus with a want of that political discernment, in judging the 
affairs of the Greek states, which had already been awakened among 
the Athenian statesmen of his time. Moreover, in the events arising 
from the situation and interests of states, he lays too much stress on 
the feelings and passions of particular individuals ; and ascribes to 
Greek statesmen (as, for instance, the two Cleisthenes ot Sicyon and 
Athens, in reference to their measures for the division of the people 
into new tribes) motives entirely different from those by which they 
appear, on a consideration of the case, to have been really actuated. 
He likewise relates mere anecdotes and tales, by which the vulgar ex- 
plained (and still continue to explain) political affairs ; where politi- 
cians, such as Thucydides and Aristotle, exhibit the true character of 
the transaction. 

§ 7. But no dissertation upon the historical researches or the style 
of Herodotus can convey an idea of the impression made by reading 
his work. To those who have read it, all description is superfluous. 
It is like hearing a person speak who has seen and lived through an 
infinite variety of the most remarkable things; and whose greatest de- 
light consists in recalling the images of the past, and perpetuating the 
remembrance of them. He had eager and unwearied listeners, who 

* Herod. III. 80. He afterwards (VI. 43) defends himself against lbs chu 
having represented a Persian as praising democracy, of which the Persian* know 
nothing. This passage proves that a part at least of Hook III, had been published 
before the entire work was completed. 

T 



274 HISTORY OP THE 

were not impatient to arrive at the end; and he could therefore com- 
plete every separate portion of the history, as if it were an inde- 
pendent narrative. He knew that he had in store other more attractive 
and striking events; yet he did not hurry his course, as he dwelt with 
equal pleasure on everything that he had seen or heard. In this man- 
ner, the stream of his Ionic language flows on with a charming facility. 
The character of his style (as is natural in mere narration) is to con- 
nect the different sentences loosely together, with many phrases for the 
purpose of introducing, recapitulating, or repeating a subject. These 
phrases are characteristic of oral discourse, which requires such contriv- 
ances, in order to prevent the speaker, or the hearer, from losing the 
thread of the story. In this, as in other respects, the language of 
Herodotus closely approximates to oral narration ; of all varieties of 
prose, it is the furthest removed from a written style. Long sentences, 
formed of several clauses, are for the most part confined to speeches, 
where reasons and objections are compared, conditions are stated, and 
their consequences developed. But it must be confessed that where 
the logical connexion of different propositions is to be expressed, Hero- 
dotus mostly shows a want of skill, and produces no distinct conception 
of the mutual relations of the several members of the argument. But, 
with all these defects, his style must be considered as the perfection of 
the unperiodic style (the \it,iQ elpo/jiivrj), the only style employed by 
his predecessors, the logographers*. To these is to be added the tone 
of the Ionic dialect, — which Herodotus, although by birth a Dorian, 
adopted from the historians who preceded himf, — with its uncontracted 
terminations, its accumulated vowels, and its soft forms. These various 
elements conspire to render the work of Herodotus a production as 
harmonious and as perfect in its kind as any human work can be. 

* Demetrius de Elocutione, §12. 

f Nevertheless, according to Hermogenes, p. 513, the Ionic dialect of Hecataeus 
is alone quite pure; and the dialect of Herodotus is mixed with other expressions. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT (.!:] i« r. 

SECOND PERIOD OF GREEK LITERATI RE. 

CHAPTER \\. 

§ 1. Early formation of a national literature in Greece, o 1. Athens subsequently 
takes the lead in literature ami art. Her fitness for this pur] I incur- 

rence of the political circumstances of Athens to the us 
Pisistratids. § 4. Great increase in the power of Athens iftei tin- lYr-i.m 
§5. Administration and policy of Pericles, particularly with respect to lit ami 
literature. § 6. Seeds of •degeneracy in the Athenian Commonwealth at its must 
flourishing period. § 7. Causes and modes of the degeneracy. § 8. Literature 
and art were not affected by the causes of moral degeneracy, 

§ 1. Greek literature, so far as we have hitherto followed its pro- 
gress, was a common property of the different races of the nation ; each 
race cultivating- that species of composition which was best suited to ill 
dispositions and capacities, and impressing on it a corresponding cha- 
racter. In this manner the town of Miletus in Ionia, the /Eolians in 
the island of Lesbos, the colonies in Magna Gnecia and Sicily, as well 
as the Greeks of the mother country, created new forms of poetry and 
eloquence. The various sorts of excellence thus produced, did not, 
after the age of the Homeric poetry, remain the exclusive property of 
the race among which they originated; as popular poems composed in 
a peculiar dialect are known only to the tribe by whom the dialect is 
spoken. Among the Greeks a national literature was early formed ; 
every literary work in the Greek language, in whatever dialect it might 
be composed, was enjoyed by the whole Greek nation. The songs of 
the Lesbian Sappho aroused the feelings of Solon in his old age, not- 
withstanding their foreign JEolian dialect*; and the researches of the 
philosophers of Eleain CEnotria influenced the thoughts of Anavigoras 
when living at Miletus and Athens! : whence it may be inferred, (hat 
the fame of remarkable writers soon spread through Greece at that 
time. Even in an earlier age, the poets and sages used to visit certain 
cities, which were considered almost as theatres, where they could bring 
their powers and acquirements into public notice. Among tluw, 
Sparta stood the highest, down to the time of the Persian war ; for the 
Lacedaemonians, though they produced little themselves, were con- 
sidered as sagacious and sound judges of art and philosophy}. Accord- 
ingly, the principal poets, musicians, and philosophers of those timet 
are related to have passed a part of their lives at Sparta §. 

§ 2. But the literature of Greece necessarily assumed a different 

* Ch. 13. § 10. t Ch. 17. §8. 

I Aristot. Polit. VIII. 5. ol Actxuvi; . . , ol pavtoivovrii ofiui Ivvxvrui «g/»M 

loSco;, us Qxtr), ru. y^^ark xu) roe. pr\ %o*trru ruv piXuv. 

^ $ For example, Archilochus, Terjuuider, Thuletus, XfcftOg&ifj Pherecydes, Anaxi- 
maader. 

•t2 



276 HISTORY OF THE 

form, when Athens, raised as well by her political power and other 
external circumstances as by the mental qualities of her citizens, 
acquired the rank of a capital of Greece, with respect to literature and 
art. Not only was her copious native literature received with admi- 
ration by all the Greeks, but her judgment and taste were predominant 
in all thing's relating to language and the arts, and decided what 
should be generally recognised as the classical literature of Greece, long 
before the Alexandrine critics had prepared their canons. There is no 
more important epoch in the history of the Greek intellect than the 
time when Athens obtained this pre-eminence over her sister states. 

The character of the Athenians peculiarly fitted them to take this 
lead. The Athenians were Ionians ; and, when their brethren sepa- 
rated from them in order to found the twelve cities on the coast of 
Asia Minor, the foundations of the peculiar character of Ionic civiliza- 
tion had already been laid. The dialect of the Ionians was distin- 
guished from that of the Dorians and iEolians by clear and broad 
marks: the worship of the gods, which had a peculiarly joyful and 
serene cast among the Ionians, had been moulded into fixed national 
festivals* : and some steps towards the development of republican feel- 
ing had already been taken, before this separation occurred. The 
boundless resources and mobility of the Ionian spirit are shown by 
the astonishing productions of the Ionians in Asia and the islands in 
the two centuries' previous to the Persian war; viz., the iambic and 
elegiac poetry, and the germs of philosophic inquiry and historical 
composition ; not to mention the epic poetry, which belongs to an 
earlier and different period. The literary works produced during that 
time by the Ionians who remained behind in Attica, seem poor and 
meagre, as compared with the luxuriant outburst of literature in 
Asia Minor: nor did it appear, till a later period, that the progress of 
the Athenian intellect was the more sound and lasting. The advance 
of the literature of. the Ionians in Asia Minor (which reminds us of 
the premature growth of a plant taken from a cold climate and 
barren soil, and carried to a warmer and more fertile region), as com- 
pared with that of the Athenians, corresponds with the natural circum- 
stances of the two countries. Ionia had, according to Herodotus, the 
softest and mildest climate in Greece ; and, although he does 
not assign it the first rank in fertility, yet the valleys of this region 
(especially that of the Maeander) were of remarkable productiveness. 
Attica, on the other hand, was rocky, and its soil was shallow^ ; 
though not barren, it required more skill and care in cultivation than 
most other parts of Greece : hence, according to the sagacious remark 

* Hence the Thargelia and Pyanepsia of Apollo, the Anthesteria and Lenaea of 
Dionysus, the Apaturia and Eleusinia, and many other festivals and religious rites, 
were common to the Ionians and Athenians, 

f to Xivroytuv. 



LITEUATUnE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 

of Thucydides, the warlike races turned by preference to the fertile 
plains of Argos, Thebes, and Thessaly, and afforded so opportunity 
for a more secure and peaceable development of social life and industry 
in Attica. Yet Attica was not deficient in natural beauties. It bad 
(as Sophocles says in the splendid chorus in the CEdipua at Colonus) 
" green valleys, in which the clear-voiced nightingale poured forth her 
sweet laments, under the shade of the dark ivy, and the sacred foliage 
of Bacchus, covering abundant fruit, impenetrable to the sun, and un- 
shaken by the blasts of all storms*." Above all, the clear air, refreshed 
and purified by constant breezes, is celebrated as one of the chief advan- 
tages of the climate of Attica, and is described by Euripides as lending 
a charm to the productions of the Athenian intellect. " Descendants 
of Erechtheus (the poet says to the Athenians)-?/, happy from ancient 
times, favourite children of the blessed gods, you pluck from your sacred 
unconquered country renowned wisdom, as a fruit of the soil, and con- 
stantly walk, with graceful step, through the glittering air of your 
heaven, where the nine sacred Muses of Pieria are said to have once 
brought up the fair-haired Harmony as their common child. It is also 
said that the goddess Cypris draws water from the beautifully flowing 
Gephisus, and breathes over the land mild and refreshing airs ; and 
that, twining her hair with fragrant roses, she sends the gods of love 
as companions of wisdom, and supporters of virtue." 

§ 3. The political circumstances of Attica contributed, in a remark- 
able manner, to produce the same effects as its physical condition. 
When the Ionians settled on the coast of Asia Minor, they soon dis- 
covered their superiority in energy and military skill to the native 
Lydian, Carian, and other tribes. Having obtained possession of the 
entire coast, they entered into a friendly relation with these tribes, 
which, owing to the early connexion of Lydia with Babylonia and 
Nineveh, brought them many luxuries and pleasures from the interior 
of Asia. The result was, that when the Lydian monarchy was strength- 
ened under the Mermnadoe, and began to aim at foreign conquest, the 
Ionians were so enfeebled and corrupted, and were so deficient in po- 
litical unity, that they fell an easy prey to the neighbouring kingdom ; 
and passed, together with the other subjects of Crctsus, under the 
power of the Persians. The Ionic inhabitants of Attica, on the other 
hand, encompassed, and often pressed by the manly tribes of Greece, 
the ^Eolians, Boeotians, and Dorians, were forced to keep the sword 
constantly in their hands, and were placed in circumstances which re- 
quired much courage and energy, in addition to the openness and 
excitability of the Ionic character. Athens, indeed, did not immedi- 
ately attain to the proud security which the Spartans derived from 
their possession of half Peloponnesus, and their undisputed mastery 

* Soph, (Ed. Col, v, 670. t Kuril). Med. v. 824. 



279 HISTORY OF THE 

of the practice of war. Hence the Athenians were forced to be 
constantly on the look-out, and to seek for opportunities of extending 
their empire. At the same time, while the Athenians sought to im- 
prove their political constitution, they strove to increase the liberty of 
the people ; and a man* like Solon could not have arisen in an Ionian 
state of Asia Minor, to become the peaceful regulator of the state with 
the approbation of the community. Solon was able to reconcile the 
hereditary rights of the aristocracy with the claims of the commonalty 
grown up to manhood ; and to combine moral strictness and order 
with freedom of action. Few statesmen shine in so bright a light as 
Solon ; his humanity and warm sympathies with all classes of his 
countrymen appear from the fragments of his elegies and iambics 
which have been already cited*. 

After Solon comes the dominion of the Pisistratids, which lasted, 
with some interruptions, for fifty years (from 560 to 510 B.C.). This 
government was administered with ability and public spirit, so far as 
was consistent with the interests of the ruling house. Pisistratus was 
a politic and circumspect prince: he extended his possessions beyond 
Attica, and established his power in the district of the gold mines on 
the Strymonf , to which the Athenians subsequently attached so much 
importance. In the interior of the country, he did much to promote 
agriculture and industry, and he is said to have particularly encouraged 
the planting of olives, which suited the soil and climate in so remark- 
able a manner. The Pisistratids also, like other tyrants, showed a 
fondness for vast works of art ; the temple of the Olympian Zeus, 
built by them, always remained, though only half finished, the largest 
building in Athens. In like manner, tyrants were fond of surrounding 
themselves with all the splendour which poetry and other musical arts 
could give to their house : and the Pisistratids certainly had the merit 
of diffusing the taste for poetry among the Athenians, and of natu- 
ralising among them the best literary productions which Greece then 
possessed. "The Pisistratids were unquestionably the first to introduce 
the recital of the entire Iliad and Odyssey at the PanathenEeaj; and 
the gentle and refined Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus, was the 
means of bringing to Athens the most distinguished lyric poets of the 
time, as Anacreon§, Simonides||, and Lasus^j". Some of the collectors 
and authors of the mystical poetry also found a welcome reception at the 
court of the Pisistratids, as Onomacritus; whom they took with them, 
at their expulsion from Athens, to the court of the King of Persia**. 
But, notwithstanding their patronage of literature and art, Herodotus 
is undoubtedly right in stating that it was not till after the fall of their 
dynasty, that Athens shot up with the. vigour which can only be de- 

* Ch. 10. § 11, 12. ch. 11. § 12. f Herod. I. 64. J Ch. 5. § 14. 

§ Ch 13. § 11. I] Ch. 14. § 10. f Ch. 14. § 14. 

** Ch. 16. $ 5. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT OREECE. 279 

rived from the consciousness of every citizen that he has a share in the 
common weal*. This statement of Herodotus refers, indeed, princi- 
pally to the warlike enterprises of Athens, but it is equally true of her 
intellectual productions. It is, indeed, a remarkable fact that Ath 
produced her most excellent works in literature and art in the midst of 
the greatest political convulsions, and of her utmost efforts for self- 
preservation or conquest. The long dominion of the Pisistratids, not- 
withstanding- the concourse of foreign poets, produced nothing more 
important than the first rudiments of the tragic drama; for the origin 
of comedy at the country festivals of Bacchus falls in the time l>< 
Pisistratus. On the other hand, the thirty years between the expul- 
sion of Hippias and the battle of Salamis (b. c. 510 to 480) was a 
period marked by great events both in politics and literature. During 
this period, Athens contended with energy and success against her 
neighbours in Bceotia and Eubcea, and soon dared to interfere in the 
affairs of the Ionians in Asia, and to support them in their revolt against 
Persia; after which, she received and warded off the first powerful 
attack of the Persians upon Greece. During the same period at 
Athens, the pathetic tragedies of Phrynichus, and the lofty tragedies of 
iEschylus, appeared on the stage ; political eloquence was awakened 
in Themistocles ; historical researches were commenced by Pherecydes ; 
and everything seemed to give a promise of the greatness to which 
Athens afterwards attained. Even sculpture at Athens did not flourish 
under the encouragement which it doubtless received from the enter- 
prising spirit of the Pisistratids, but first arose under the influence of 
political freedom. While, from b.c. 540, considerable masters and 
whole families and schools of brass-founders, workers in gold and ivory, 
&c, existed in Argos, Lacedsemon, Sicyon, and elsewhere, the Athens 
of the Pisistratids could not boast of a single sculptor ; nor is it till the 
time of the battle of Marathon, that Antenor, Critias, aud Hegias are 
mentioned as eminent masters in brass-founding. But the work for 
which both Antenor and Hegias were chiefly celebrated was the brazen 
statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton, the tyrannicides and liberators 
of Athens from the yoke of the Pisistratids, according to the tradition 
of the Athenian peoplet. 

§ 4. The great peril of the Persian war thus came upon a race of 
high spirited and enterprising men, and exercised upon it the hardening 
and elevating influence, by which great dangers, successfully overcome, 
become the highest benefit to a state. Such a period withdraws the 
mind from petty, selfish cares, and fixes it on great and public objects. 
At the moment when half Greece had quailed before the Persian army, 
the Athenians, with a fearless spirit of independence, abandon their 
* Herod. V. 78. t Ch. 13. §17. 



280 HISTORY OF THE 

country to the ravages of the enemy : embarking in their ships, they 
decide the sea-fights in favour of the Greeks, and again they are in the 
land-war the steadiest supporters of the Spartans. The wise modera- 
tion with which, for the sake of the general good, they submitted to the 
supreme command of Sparta, combined with a bold and enterprising 
spirit, which Sparta did not possess, is soon rewarded to an extent 
which must have exceeded the most sanguine hopes of the Athenian 
statesmen. The attachment of the Ionians to their metropolis, Athens, 
which had been awakened before the battle of Marathon, soon 
led to a closer connexion between nearly all the Greeks of the Asiatic 
coast and this state. Shortly afterwards, Sparta withdrew, with the 
other Greeks of the mother country, from any further concern in the 
contest ; and an Athenian alliance was formed for the termination of 
the national war, which was changed, by gradual yet rapid transitions, 
into a dominion of Athens over her allies; so that she became the 
sovereign of a large and flourishing empire, comprehending the 
islands and coasts of the iEgean, and a part of the Euxine seas. In 
this manner, Athens gained a wide basis for the lofty edifice of political 
glory which was raised by her statesmen. 

§ 5. The completion of this splendid structure was due to Pericles, 
during his administration, which lasted from about B.C. 464, to his 
death (b.c. 429). Pericles changed the allies of Athens into her 
subjects, by declaring the common treasure to be the treasure of the 
Athenian state ; and he resolutely maintained the supremacy of Athens, 
Tby punishing with severity every attempt at defection. Through his 
influence, Athens became a dominant community, whose chief business 
it was to administer the affairs of an extensive empire, flourishing iu 
agriculture, mechanical industry, and commerce. Pericles, however, 
did not make the acquisition of this power the highest object of his 
exertions, nor .did he wish the Athenians to consider it as their greatest 
good. His aim was to realise in Athens the idea which he had con- 
ceived of human greatness. He wished that great and noble thoughts 
should pervade the whole mass of the ruling people ; and this was in 
fact the case, so long as his influence lasted, to a greater degree than 
has occurred in any other period of history. Pericles stood among the 
citizens of Athens, without any public office which gave him extensive 
legal power* ; and yet he exercised an influence over the multitude 
which has been rarely possessed by an hereditary ruler. The 

* Pericles was indeed treasurer of the administration (<5 Wi <rr,s ^toixfoiai) at the 
breaking out of the Peloponnesian war ; but, although this office required an ac- 
curate knowledge of the finances of Athens, it did not confer any hgal power. It 
is assumed ihat the times are excepted, in which Pericles was strategus, particularly 
at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when the strategus had a very extensive 
executive power, because Athens, being in a state of siege, was treated like a for- 
tified camp. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GUI 

Athenians saw in him, when he spoke to the people from the tana, an 

Olympian Zeus, who hid the thunder and lightning in nil DOW*. 

It was not the volubility of his eloquence, but the irresistible 

his arguments, and the majesty of his whole appesmnce, which gained 

him this appellation: hence a comic poet said of him, that he 
was the only one of the orators who left his sting in the minds oi 
hearers*. 

The objects to which Pericles directed the people, and for which he 
accumulated so much power and wealth at Athens, may be best -ecu in 
the still extant works of architecture and sculpture which originated 
under his administration. The defence of the state being- already pro- 
vided for, through the instrumentality of Themistocles Cimon, and 
Pericles himself, by the fortifications of the city and harbour and the 
long walls, Pericles induced the Athenian people to expend upon the 
decoration of Athens, by works of architecture and sculpture, a larger 
part of its ample revenues than was ever applied to this purpose in any 
other state, either republican or monarchicalf. This outlay of public 
money, which at any other period would have been excessive, was then 
well-timed ; since the art of sculpture had just reached a pitch of high 
excellence, after long and toilsome efforts, and persons endowed with 
its magical powers, such as Phidias, were in close intimacy with 
Pericles. Of the surpassing skill with which Pericles collected into one 
focus the rays of artistical genius at Athens, no stronger proof can be 
afforded, than the fact that no subsequent period, through the patronage 
either of Macedonian or Roman princes, produced works of equal excel- 
lence. Indeed, it may be said that the creations of the age of Pericles 
are the only works of art which completely satisfy the most refined and 
cultivated taste. But it cannot have been the intention of Pericles, or 
of the Athenians who shared his views, to limit their countrymen to 
those enjoyments of art which are derived from the eye. It is known 
that Pericles was on terms of intimacy with Sophocles ; and it may I t 
presumed that Pericles thoroughly appreciated such works as the An- 
tigone of Sophocles ; since (as we shall show hereafter) there was a 
close, analogy between the political principles of Pericles and the 
poetical character of Sophocles. Pericles, however, lived on a still more 
intimate footing with Anaxagoras, the first philosopher who proclaimed 

* Maya; *&* ptfTo^eov To tcivrgov iyxar'tXnTi to7; ot,Kt>ouf/.ivoi;. Eupolis in the Demi. 

\ The annual revenue of Athens at the time of Pericles is estimated at lono 
talents (rather more than 200,000/.) ; of which sum (i00 talents Bowed from the tri- 
butes of the allies. If we reckon that the Propylapa (with the buildingi belonging 
to it) cost -2012 talents, the expense of all the buildingi of this time. — the Odeon, 
the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the temple at Kleusis. and other contemporary 
temples in the country, as at Rhamnus and Sunium, together with the sculpture and 
colouring, statues of gold and ivory, as the I'allas in the Parthenon, carpet i, \c, — 
cannot have been less than 8000 talents. And yet all these works fell in the last 
twenty years of the Peloponnesian war, 



2S2 HISTORY 01 THE 

in Greece the doctrine of a regulating intelligence*. The house of 
Pericles, particularly from the time when the beautiful and accom- 
plished Milesian Aspasia presided over it with a greater freedom of in- 
tercourse than Athenian usage allowed to wives, was a point of union 
for all the men who had conceived the intellectual superiority of Athens. 
The sentiment attributed by Thucydides to Pericles in the celebrated 
funeral oration, that " Athens is the school of Greece," is doubtless, if 
not in words, at least in substance, the genuine expression of Periclesf. 
§ 6. It could not be expected that this brilliant exhibition of human 
excellence should be without its dark side, or that the flourishing state 
of Athenian civilization should be exempt from the elements of decay. 
The political position of Athens soon led to a conflict between the patri- 
otism and moderation of her citizens and their interests and passions. 
From the earliest times, Athens had stood in an unfriendly relation to 
the rest of Greece. Even the Ionians, who dwelt in Asia Minor, sur- 
rounded by Dorians and iEolians, did not, until their revolt from Persia, 
receive from the Athenians the sympathy common among the Greeks 
between members of the same race. Nor did the other states of the 
mother country ever so far recognise the intellectual supremacy of 
Athens, as to submit to her in political alliances ; and therefore Athens 
never exercised such an ascendency over the independent states of 
Greece as was at various times conceded to Sparta. At the very 
foundation of her political greatness, Athens could not avoid struggling 
to free herself from the superintendence of the other Greeks ; and since 
Attica was not an island, — which would have best suited the views of 
the Athenian statesmen, — Athens was, by means of immense fortifica- 
tions, as far as possible isolated from the laud and withdrawn from the 
influence of the dominant military powers. The eyes of her statesmen 
were exclusively turned towards the sea. They thought that the national 
character of the Ionians of Attica, the situation of this peninsula, and 
its internal resources, especially its silver mines, fitted Athens for mari- 
time sovereignty. Moreover, the Persian war had given her a powerful 
impulse in this direction ; and by her large navy she stood at the head 
of the confederate islanders and Asiatics, who wished to continue the 
war against Persia for their own liberation and security. These confe- 
derates had before been the subjects of the King of Persia; and had 
long been more accustomed to slavish obedience than to voluntary 
exertion. It was their refusals and delays, which first induced Athens 
to draw the reins tighter, and to assume a supremacy over them. The 

* The author of the first Alcibiades (among the Platonic dialogues), p. 1 18, unites 
the philosophical musicians, Pythocleides and Damon, with Anaxagoras, as friends 
of Pericles. Pericles is also said to have been connected with Zeno the Eleatic and 
Protagoras the sophist. 

f Thucyd, II. 41, fynXuv ti "kiyw thv <za.tTtt* 9ro\r» rvis 'EXXxho; tfcc'ihvw iivau 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 

Athenians were not cruel and 'sanguinary by nature ; but a reel 
seventy, when there was a question of maintaining principles which 

they thought necessary to their existence, was implanted (Uej.lv in their 
character; and circumstances too often impelled them to empli 
against their allies. The Athenian policy of compelling bo man] 

to contribute their wealth in order to make Athens the locus of art and 
cultivation, was indeed accompanied with pride and selfish patriotism. 
Vet the Athenians did not reduce millions to a itatfl ol abject servitude, 
lor the purpose of ministering to the wants of a Inv thousand 
The object of their statesmen, such as Pericles, doubtless was, to make 
Athens the pride of the whole confederacy; that their allies should 
enjoy in common with them the productions of Athenian art, and 
especially should participate in the great festivals, the Panathcnaa and 
Dionysia, on the embellishment of which all the treasures of wealth and 
art were lavished*. 

§ 7. Energy in action and cleverness in the use of languagef were the 
qualities which most distinguished the Athenians in comparison with the 
other Greeks, and which are most clearly seen in their political conduct 
and their literature. Both qualities are very liable to abuse. The energy 
in action degenerated into a restless love of adventure, which was the 
chief cause of the fall of the Athenian power in the Peloponnesian war, 
after the conduct of it had ceased to be directed by the clear and com- 
posed views of Pericles. The consciousness of dexterity in the use of 
words, which the Athenians cultivated more than the other Greeks, in- 
duced them to subject everything to discussion. Hence too arose a 
copiousness of speech, very striking as compared with the brevity of 
the early Greeks, which compressed the results of much reflection in a 
few words. It is remarkable that, soon after the Persian war, the great 
Cimon was distinguished from his countrymen by avoiding all Attic 
eloquence and loquacity]:. Steslmbrotus, of Thasos, a contemporary, 
observed of him, that the frank and noble were prominent in his cha- 
racter, and that he had the qualities of a Peloponnesian more than of 
an Athenian§. Yet this fluency of the Athenians was long restrained 
by the deeply-rooted maxims of traditional morality ; nor was it till the 
beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when a foreign race of teachers, 

* There are many grounds for thinking that these festivals wore instituted ex- 
pressly for the allies, who attended them m large numbers. Prayers wore. also pub- 
licly offered at the Panathensca for the Plateaus (Herod, vi. III.)j and at all great 
public festivals for the Chians (Theopomp. ap. Schol. Aristoph. At. B80 
nearly the only faithful ally of the Athenians in the Peloponnesian war, after tlio 
defection of the Mytilenivans. Moreover, the colonies of Alliens | i.e. probably, in 

general, the cities of the confederacy) offered sacrifices at the Panathen 

co fyatrrfyiov xcc) to Itivov. I hiiarr,; and - 

§ In Plutarch, Cimon, c. 4, indeed, Stesimbrotus is not unjustly censured for his 
credulity and his fondness for narrating the c/ironirjuc t e t mdnl tmM Of those times : but 
statements, such as that in the text, founded upon personal observation of the 
general state of society, are always very valuable. 



284 HISTORY OF THE 

chiefly from the colonies in the east and west, established themselves at 
Athens, that the Athenians learnt the dangerous art of subjecting the 
traditional maxims of morality to a scrutinising examination. For al- 
though this examination ultimately led to the establishing of morality 
on a scientific basis, yet it at first gave a powerful impulse to immoral 
motives and tendencies, and, at any rate, destroyed the habits founded 
on unreasoning faith. These arts of the sophists — for such was the 
name of the new teachers — were the more pernicious to the Athenians, 
because the manliness of the Athenian character, which shone forth so 
nobly during the Persian war and the succeeding period, had already 
fallen off before the Feloponnesian war, under the administration of 
Pericles. This degeneracy was owing to the same accidental causes, 
which produced the noble qualities of the Athenians. Plato says that 
Pericles made the Athenians lazy, cowardly, loquacious, and covetous*. 
This severe judgment, suggested to Plato by his constant repugnance 
to the practical statesmen of his time, cannot be considered as just ; yet 
it must be admitted that the principles of the policy of Pericles were 
closely connected with the demoralization so bluntly described by 
Plato. By founding the power of the Athenians on dominion of the 
sea, he led them to abandon land-war and the military exercises requi- 
site for it, which had hardened the old warriors of Marathon. In the 
ships, the rowers played the chief part, who, except in times of "great 
danger, consisted not of citizens, but of mercenaries ; so that the Co- 
rinthians in Thucydides about the beginning of the Peloponnesian war 
justly describe the power of the Athenians as being rather purchased 
with money than nativef. In the next place, Pericles made the Athe- 
nians a dominant people, whose time was chiefly devoted to the business 
of governing their widely extended empire. Hence it was necessary for 
him to provide that the common citizens of Athens should be able to 
gain a livelihood by their attention to public business; and accord- 
ingly it was contrived that a considerable part of the large revenues of 
Athens should be distributed among the citizens, in the form of wages 
for attendance in the courts of justice, the public assembly, and the 
council, and also on less valid grounds, for example, as money for the 
theatre. Those payments to the citizens for their share in the public 
business were quite new in Greece ; and many well disposed persons 
considered the sitting and listening in thePnyx and the courts of justice 
as an idle life in comparison with the labour of the ploughman and 
vinegrower in the country. Nevertheless, a considerable time elapsed 
before the bad qualities developed by these circumstances so far pre- 
vailed as to overcome the noble habits and tendencies of the Athenian 
character. For a long time the industrious cultivators, the brave war- 
* Plat. Gorg.p. 515. E. 
f Thucyd. II. 121. Comp. Plutarch, Perkl. 9. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 

riors, and the men of old-fashioned morality were opposed, among the 
citizens of Athens, to the loquacious, luxurious, and dissolute genera- 
tion who passed their whole time in the market-place and courts of 
justice. The contest between these two parties is the main subject of 
the early Attic comedy ; and accordingly we shall recur to it in con- 
nexion with Aristophanes. 

§ 8. Literature and art, however, were not, during the Peloponnesian 
war, affected by the corruption of morals. The works of this period,— 
which the names of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Phidias are sufficient to 
call to our minds — exhibit not only a perfection of form, but also an 
elevation of soul and a grandeur of conception, which fill us almost 
with as much admiration for those whose minds were sufficiently ma- 
ture and strong to enjoy such works of art, as for those who produced 
them. Pericles, whose whole administration was evidently intended to 
diffuse a taste for genuine beauty among the people, could justly use 
the words attributed to him by Thucydides : "We are fond of beauty 
without departing from simplicity, and we seek wisdom without becom- 
ing effeminate*."' A step farther, and the love of genuine beauty gave 
place to a desire for evil pleasures, and the love of wisdom degenerated 
into a habit of idle logomachy. 

We now turn to the drama, the species of poetry which peculiarly 
belongs to the Athenians; and we shall here see how the utmost beauty 
and elegance were gradually developed out of rude, stiff, antique forms. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



§ 1. Causes of dramatic poetry in Greece. § 2. The invention of dramatic poetry 
peculiar to Greece. § 3. Origin of the Greek drama from the worship of Bac- 
chus. § 4 Earliest, or Doric form of tragedy, a choral or dithyrambic song in the 
worship of Bacchus. § 5. Connexion of the early tragedy with a chorus of satyrs. 
§ 6. Improvement of tragedy at Athens by Thespis ; 6 7. by Phr) nichus ; 
§ 8. and by Choerilus. Cultivation of the satyric drama by the latter. § 9. The 
satyric drama completely separated from tragedy by Pratinas. 

§ 1. The spirit of an age is, in general, more completely and faithfully 
represented by its poetry than by any branch of prose composition ; 
and, accordingly, we may best trace the character of the three different 
stages of civilization among the Greeks in the three grand divisions of 
their poetry. The epic poetry belongs to a period when, during the 

* Thucyd. II. 40. <piXonuXoZfjt.iv yct£ fzir, tvrsXuu;, xoc) <piXoffo<poZ(Aiv cinu /uctXaxiccf. 
The word turlXttx is not to be understood as if the Athenians did not expend large 
sums of public money upon works of art ; what Pericles means is, that the Athenians 
admired the simple and severe beauty of art alone, without seeking after glitter ana 
magnificence. 



2S6 HISTORY OF THE 

continuance of monarchical institutions, the minds of the people were 
impregnated and swayed by legends handed down from antiquity. 
Elegiac, iambic, and lyric poetry arose in the more stirring and agitated 
times which accompanied the development of republican governments ; 
times in which each individual gave vent to his personal aims and wishes, 
and all the depths of the human breast were unlocked by the inspirations 
of poetry. And now when, at the summit of Greek civilization, in the 
very prime of Athenian power and freedom, we see dramatic poetry 
spring up, as the organ of the prevailing thoughts and feelings of the 
time, and throwing all other varieties of poetry into the shade, we are 
naturally led to ask, how it comes that this style of poetry agreed so 
well with the spirit of the age, and so far outstripped its competitors 
in the contest for public favour ? 

Dramatic poetry, as the Greek name plainly declares, represents 
actions ; which are not (as in the epos) merely narrated, but seem to 
take place before the eyes of the spectator. Yet this external appear- 
ance cannot constitute the essential difference between dramatic and 
epic poetry : for, since the events thus represented do not really happen 
at the moment, of their representation ; since the speech and actions of 
the persons in the drama are only a fiction of the poet, and, when suc- 
cessful, an illusion to the spectator; it would follow that the whole 
difference turned upon a mere deception. The essence of this style of 
poetry has a much deeper source ; viz., the state of the poet's mind, 
when engaged in the contemplation of his subject. The epic poet 
seems to regard the events which he relates, from afar, as objects of 
calm contemplation and admiration, and is always conscious of the 
great interval between him and them ; while the dramatist plunges, 
with his entire soul, into the scenes of human life, and seems himself to 
experience the events which he exhibits to our view. He 'experiences 
them in a two-fold manner : first, because in the drama, actions (as they 
arise out of the depths of the human heart) are represented as com- 
pletely and as naturally as if they originated in our own breasts ; se- 
condly, because the effect of the actions and fortunes of the personages 
upon the sympathies of other persons in the drama itself is exhibited 
with such force, that the listener feels himself constrained to like sym- 
pathy, and powerfully attracted within the circle of the drama. This 
second means, the strong sympathy in the action of the drama, was, at 
the time when this style of poetry was developing itself, by far the most 
important ; and hence arose the necessity of the chorus, as a partici- 
pator in the fortunes of the principal characters in the drama of this 
period. Another similar fact is that the Greek drama did not originate 
from the narrative, but from a branch of lyric poetry. The latter point, 
however, we shall examine hereafter. At present, we merely consider 
the fact that the drama comprehends and develops the events of humaij 
life with a force and depth which no other style of poetry can reach ; 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 287 

and that these admit only of a dramatic treatment, while outward nature 
is best described in epic and lyric poetry. 

§ 2. If we carry ourselves in imagination back to a time when dra- 
matic composition was unknown, we must acknowledge that its crea- 
tion required great boldness of mind. Hitherto the hard had only 
sung- of gods and heroes, as elevated beings, from ancient traditions ; it 
was, therefore, a great change for the poet himself to come forward all 
at once in the character of the god or hero ; in a nation which, even 
in its amusements, had always adhered closely to established usage. It 
is true that there is much in human nature which impels it to dramatic 
representations ; namely, the universal love of imitating other persons, 
and the childlike liveliness with which a narrator, strongly impressed 
with his subject, delivers a speech which he has heard, or, perhaps, only 
imagined. Yet there is a wide step from these disjointed elements to the 
genuine drama; and it seems that no nation except the Greeks ever 
made this step. The Old Testament contains narratives interwoven 
"with speeches and dialogues, as the Book of Job ; and lyric poems 
placed in a dramatic connexion, as Solomon's Song ; but we nowhere 
find in this literature any mention of dramas properly so called. The 
dramatic poetry of the Indians belongs to a time when there had 
been much intercourse between Greece and India; and the mysteries 
of the Middle Ages were grounded upon a tradition, though a very 
obscure one, from antiquity. Even in ancient Greece and Italy, dra- 
matic poetry, and especially tragedy, attained to perfection only in 
Athens; and, even here, it was only exhibited at a few festivals of a 
single god, Dionysus; while epic rhapsodies and lyric odes were recited 
on various occasions. All this is incomprehensible, if we suppose dra- 
matic poetry to have originated in causes independent of the peculiar 
circumstances of the time and place. If a love of imitation, and a 
delight in disguising the real person under a mask, were the basis 
upon which this style of poetry was raised, the drama would have 
been as natural and as universal among men as these qualities are 
common to their nature. 

§ 3. A more satisfactory explanation of the origin of the Greek 
drama may be found in its connexion with the worship of the gods, 
and particularly that of Bacchus. The Greek worship contains a great 
number of dramatic elements. The gods were supposed to dwell \\\ 
their temples, and participate in their festivals; and it was not con- 
sidered presumptuous or unbecoming to represent them as acting like 
human beings. Thus, Apollo's combat with the dragon, and his con- 
sequent flight and expiation, were represented by a noble youth of 
Delphi; in Samos the marriage of Zeus and Here was exhibited at the 
great festival of the goddess. The Eleusinian mysteries were (as an 
ancient writer expresses it*) " a mystical drama," in which the his- 
* Clem, Alex, Frotrept. n. 12. Potter. 



288 HISTORY OF THE 

tory of Demeter and Cora was acted, like a play, by priests and 
priestesses; though, probably, only with mimic action, illustrated by a 
few significant sentences of a symbolic nature, and by the singing of 
hymns. There were also similar mimic representations in the worship 
of Bacchus ; thus, at the Anthesteria at Athens, the wife of the second 
Archon, who bore the title of Queen, was betrothed to Dionysus in a 
secret solemnity, and in public processions even the god himself was 
represented by a man*. At the Boeotian festival of the Agrionia, 
Dionysus was supposed to have disappeared, and to be sought for 
among the mountains; there was also a maiden (representing one of 
the nymphs in the train of Dionysus), who was pursued by a priest, 
carrying a hatchet, and personating a being hostile to the God. This 
festival rite, which is frequently mentioned by Plutarch, is the origin 
of the fable, which occurs in Homer, of the pursuit of Dionysus and his 
nurses by the furious Lycurgus. 

But the worship of Bacchus had one quality which was, more than 
any other, calculated to give birth to the drama, and particularly to 
tragedy ; namely, the enthusiasm, which formed an essential part of it. 
This enthusiasm (as we have already remarkedf) proceeded from an 
impassioned sympathy with the events of nature, in connexion with 
the course of the seasons ; especially with the struggle which Nature 
seemed to make in winter, in order that she might break forth in 
spring with renovated beauty : hence the festivals of Dionysus at 
Athens and elsewhere were all solemnised in the months which were 
nearest to the shortest dayj. The feeling which originally prevailed 
at these festivals was, that the enthusiastic participators in them be- 
lieved that they perceived the god to be really affected by the changes 
of nature ; killed or dying, flying and rescued, reanimated or returning, 
victorious and dominant ; and all who shared in the festival felt these 
joyful or mournful events, as if they were under the immediate influence 
of them. Now the great changes which took place in the religion, as 
well as in the general cultivation of the Greeks, banished from men's 
minds the conviction that the happy or unhappy events, which they be- 
wailed or rejoiced in, really occurred in nature before their eyes. Bac- 
chus, accordingly, was conceived as an individual, anthropomorphic, 
self-existing being ; but the enthusiastic sympathy with Dionysus and his 

* A beautiful slave of Nicias represented Dionysus on an occasion of this kind : 
Plutarch, Nic. 3. Compare the description of the great Bacchic procession under 
Ptolemy Philadelphus in Athen. v. p. 196, sq. 

f Ch. 2. § 4. 

\ In Athens the months succeeded one another in the following order : — Posei- 
deon, Gamelion (formerly Lenaeon), Anthesterion, Elaphebolion ; these, according 
to Boeckh's convincing demonstration, contained the Bacchic festivals of the lesser 
or country Dionysia, Lenaea, Anthesteria, the greater or city Dionysia. In Delphi, 
the three winter months were sacred to Dionysus (Plutarch de E t ap. Delphos, c. 9.), 
and the great festival of Trieterica was celebrated on Parnassus at the time of the 
shortest day. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 289 

fortunes, as with real events, always remained. The swarm of subordi- 
nate beings — Satyrs, Panes, and Nymphs— by whom Bacchus was sur- 
rounded, and through whom life seemed to pass from the god of out- 
ward nature into vegetation and the animal world, and branch oil* into a 
variety of beautiful or grotesque forms, were ever present to the fancy 
of the Greeks ; it was not necessary to depart very widely from the 
ordinary course of ideas, to imagine that dances of fair nymphs and bold 
satyrs, among the solitary woods and rocks, were visible to human eyes, 
or even in fancy to take a part in them. The intense desire felt by every 
worshipper of Bacchus to fight, to conquer, to suffer, in common with 
him, made them regard these subordinate beings as a convenient step by 
which they could approach more nearly to the presence of their divinity. 
The custom, so prevalent at the festivals of Bacchus, of taking the dis- 
guise of satyrs, doubtless originated in this feeling, and not in the mere 
desire of concealing excesses under the disguise of a mask ; otherwise, 
so serious and pathetic a spectacle as tragedy could never have origi- 
nated in the choruses of these satyrs. The desire of escaping from 
self, into something new and strange, of living in an imaginary world, 
breaks forth in a thousand instances in these festivals of Bacchus. It 
»is seen in the colouring the body with plaster, soot, vermilion, and 
different sorts of green and red juices of plants, wearing goats and 
deer skins round the loins, covering the face with large leaves of dif- 
ferent plants ; and, lastly, in the wearing masks of wood, bark, and 
other materials, and of a complete costume belonging to the character. 
§ 4. These facts seem to us to explain how the drama might na- 
turally originate from the enthusiasm of the worship of Bacchus, as a 
part of his festival ceremonies. We now come to consider the direct 
evidence respecting its origin. The learned writers of antiquity agree 
in stating that tragedy, as well as comedy, was originally a choral 
song.* It is a most important fact in the history of dramatic poetry, 
that the lyric portion, the song of the chorus, was the original part of it. 
The action, the adventure of the god, was pre-supposed, or only sym- 
bolically indicated by the sacrifice : the chorus expressed their feelings 
upon it. This choral song belonged to the class of dithyrambs ; Aris- 
totle says that tragedy originated with the singers of the dithyramb. f 
The dithyramb was, as we have already seen, \ an enthusiastic ode to 
Bacchus, which had in early time been sung at convivial meetings by 
the drunken revellers, but, after the time of Arion (about b. c. 620), was 
regularly executed by a chorus. The dithyramb was capable of ex- 
pressing every variety of feeling excited by the worship and mythology 

* One passage will serve for many: Euanthius de tragffidia et comoedia, c. 'J. 
Comoedia fere vetus, ut ipsa quoque olim tragaedia, simplex l'uit carmen, quod cho- 
rus circa aras fum antes nunc spaliatus, nunc consistent nunc vevolvtns gyros, cum 
tibicine concinebat. 

f Aristot. Poet. 4. uto ruv i^ei^oyruv rov^ityxfifiav. 

I Ch. XIV. § 7. 

U 



290 HISTORY OF THE 

of Bacchus. There were dithyrambs of a gay and joyous tone, cele- 
brating- the commencement of spring ; but tragedy, with its solemn and 
gloomy character, could not have proceeded from these. The dithy- 
ramb, from which tragedy probably took its origin, turned upon the 
sorrows of Dionysus. This appears from the remarkable account of 
Herodotus, that in Sicyon, in the time of the tyrant Cleisthenes (about 
600 b,c), tragic choruses had been represented, which celebrated the 
sorrows, not of Dionysus, but of the hero Adrastus ; and that Clei- 
sthenes restored these choruses to the worship of Dionysus* This 
shows, not only that there were at that time tragic choruses, but also 
that the subject of them had been changed from Dionysus to other 
heroes, especially those who were distinguished by their misfortunes and 
sufferings. The reason why sometimes the dithyramb,! and afterwards 
tragedy, was transferred from Dionysus to heroes, and not to other 
gods of the Greek Olympus, was that the latter were elevated above 
the chances of fortune, and the alternations of joy and grief, to which 
both Dionysus and the heroes were subject. The date given by Hero- 
dotus agrees well with the statement of the ancient grammarians, 
that the celebrated dithyrambic poet, Arion (about 580 b. a), invented 
the tragic style (rpayiKOQ rpo7rog); evidently the same variety of dithyramb « 
as that usual in Sicyon in the time of Cleisthenes. This narrative also 
gives some probability to the tradition of a tragic author of Sicyon, 
named Epigenes, who lived before the time of the Athenian dramatists ; 
from the perplexed and, in part, corrupt notices of him it is conjectured 
that he was the first who transferred tragedy from Dionysus to other 
persons. 

§ 5. In attempting to form a more precise conception of the ancient 
tragedy, when it still belonged exclusively to the worship of Bacchus, 
we are led by the statement of Aristotle, " that tragedy originated with 
the chief singers of the dithyramb," to suppose that the leaders of the 
chorus came forward separately. It may be conjectured that these, either 
as representatives of Dionysus himself, or as messengers from his train, 
narrated the perils which threatened the god, and his final escape from 
or triumph over them ; and that the chorus then expressed its feelings, 
as at passing events. The chorus thus naturally assumed the character 
of satellites of Dionysus ; whence they easily fell into the parts of 
satyrs, who were not only his companions in sportive adventures, but 
also in combats and misfortunes ; and were as well adapted to express 
terror or fear, as gaiety or pleasure. It is stated by Aristotle and many 
grammarians, that the most ancient tragedy bore the character of a 

* Herod. V. 67. to. Tu,6ta ahrov vgu.yix.o~i<Tt ^OQoiai lyiociigov, <rov (At Aiovuffev oh ti/jiiuv 
Tt;, rov Tt " A^'itrrov. KXet<r0zvr,s Ti X, ^ " 5 f* iv r V Aievuiru aorsLxE. Whether u.ir'ib'ux.i is 
translated, u He gave them back," or (i He gave them as something due," the result 
is the same. 

t There was a dithyramb, entitled Memnon, composed by Simonides, Strabo, 
xvi. p. 728, comp, Plutarch de Mus. c. 10. 



MTERATURR OP ANCIENT GREECE. 201 

sport of satyrs; and the introduction of satyrs into this species of poetry 
is ascribed to Arion, who is said to have invented the tragic dithyramb. 
The name of tragedy, ov goafs song, was even by the ancients derived 
from the resemblance of the singers, in their character of satyrs, to 
g'oats. Yet the slight resemblance in form between satyrs and goats 
could hardly have given a name to this kind of poetry ; it is far more 
probable that this species of dithyramb was originally performed at the 
burnt sacrifice of a goat ; the connexion of which with the subject of 
the earliest tragedy can only be explained by means of mythological 
researches foreign to the present subject.* 

Thus far had tragedy advanced among the Dorians, who therefore 
considered themselves the inventors of it. All its further development 
belongs to the Athenians ; while among the Dorians it seems to have 
been long preserved in its original lyric form. Doubtless tragic dithy- 
rambs of the same kind as those in Sicyon and Corinth continued for 
a long time to be sung in Athens; probably at the temple of Bacchus, 
called Lenaeum, and the Lensean festival, with which all the genuine 
traditions respecting the origin of tragedy were connected. Moreover, 
the Lenaean festival was solemnized exactly, at the time when, in other 
parts of Greece, the sorrows of Dionysus were bewailed. Hence in 
later times, when the dramatic spectacles were celebrated at the three 
Dionysiac festivals of the year, tragedy preceded comedy at the Lenaea, 
and followed immediately after the festival procession; while both at 
the greater and lesser Dionysia, comedy, which came after a great 
carousal, was first, and was followed by tragedy.*)- At these festivals, 
before the innovations of Thespis, when the chorus had assembled round 
the altar of Dionysus, an individual from the midst of the chorus is said 
to have answered the other members of the chorus from the sacrificial 
table (eXtoc) near the altar; that is to say, he probably imparted to 
them in song the subjects which excited and guided the feelings ex- 
pressed by the chorus in its chants. 

* We here reject the common account (adopted, among other writers, by Horace) 
of the invention of comedy at the vintage, the faces smeared with lees of wine, the 
waggon with which Thespis went round Attica, and so forth ; since all these arise 
from a confusion between the origin of comedy and tragedy. Comedy really ori- 
ginated at the rural Dionysia, or the vintage festival (see ch. XXVII.). Aristophanes 
calls the comic poets of his own time lee-singers (r^uyuhl), but he never gives this 
name to the tragic poets and actors. The waggon suits not the dithyramb, which 
was sung by a standing chorus, but a procession, winch occurred in the earliest form 
of comedy; moreover, in many festivals, there was a custom of throwing out 
and scurrilous abuse from a waggon {trxu^ara 1£ uf*u%av). It is only by completely 
avoiding this error (which rests on a very natural confusion) that it is possible to 
reconcile the earliest history of the drama with the best testimonies, especially that 
of Aristotle. 

f According to the very important statements concerning the parts of these fes- 
tivals, which are in the documents cited in the speech of Demosthenes against 
Midias. Of the Lenaea it is said, 'a in) Anvalu <xof/.nn xa) ol r^aytubo) xa.) ol xu/u.w'&oi ; 
of the greater Dionysia, ro7$ iv a<f-~n Auvurioi; h 'xo^n xa) ol vrvXbn xa) b xuf*.oi xa) ol 
xupoJbol xa.) ol r^ayoShoi ; of the lesser Dionysia in the Piraeus, h xop-xh ru Auvto-y iv 
Uu^aiu xa) ol xv/xuoo) xu) ol r^uyubol. 

u 2 



292 HISTORY OF THE 

§ 6. The ancients, however, are agreed that Thespis first caused 
tragedy to become a drama, though a very simple one. In the time of 
Pisistratus (b. c. 536), Thespis made the great step of connecting with 
the choral representation (which had hitherto at most admitted an in- 
terchange of voices) a regular dialogue, which was only distinguished 
from the language of common life by its metrical form and by a more 
elevated tone. For this purpose, he joined one person to the chorus, 
who was the first actor* Now according to the ideas which we have 
formed from the finished drama, one actor appears to be no better than 
none at all. When however it is borne in mind, that, according to the 
constant practice of the ancient drama, one actor played several parts in 
the same piece (for which the linen masks, introduced by Thespis, must 
have been of great use) ; and moreover, that the chorus was combined 
with the actor, and could maintain a dialogue with him, it is easy to see 
how a dramatic action might be introduced, continued and concluded 
by the speeches inserted between the choral songs. Let us, for example, 
from among the pieces whose titles have been preserved,t take the Pen- 
theus. In this, the single actor might appear successively as Dionysus, 
Pentheus, a Messenger, and Agave, the mother of Pentheus ; and, in 
these several characters, might announce designs and intentions, or re- 
late events which could not conveniently be represented, as the murder 
of Pentheus by his unfortunate mother, or express triumphant joy at the 
deed ; by which means he would represent, not without interesting 
scenes, the substance of the fable, as it is given in the Bacchse of Euri- 
pides. Messengers and heralds probably played an important part in 
this early drama (which, indeed, they retained to a considerable extent 
in the perfect form of Greek tragedy ;) and the speeches were probably 
short, as compared with the choral songs, which they served to explain. 
In the drama of Thespis, the persons of the chorus frequently repre- 
sented satyrs, as well as other parts ; for, before the satyric drama had 
acquired a distinctive character, it must have been confounded with 
tragedy. 

The dances of the chorus were still a principal part of the perform- 
ance; the ancient tragedians in general were teachers of dancing, (or, 
as we should say, ballet-masters,) as well as poets and musicians. 

In the time of Aristophanes, (when plays of Thespis could scarcely 
be represented upon the stage,) the dances of Thespis were still per- 
formed by admirers of the ancient style.! Moreover, Aristotle remarks 
that the earliest tragedians used the long trochaic verse (the trochaic 
tetrameter) in the dialogue more than the iambic trimeter ; now the 
former was peculiarly adapted to lively, dance-like gesticulations.§ 

* Called i/Troxoirh;, from vvoxgivitrfai, because he answered the songs of the chorus. 

f The funeral games of Pelias or Phorbas, the Priests, the Youths, Pentheus. 

I Aristoph. Vesp. M79. 

$ This is also confirmed by the passage of Aris'oph. Pac. 322. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 

These metres were not invented by the tragic poets, but were bom 
by them from Archilochus, Solon, and other poets of this class,' and 
invested with the appropriate character ami expression. Probably the 
tragic poets adopted the lively and impassioned trochaic verse, while 
the comic poets adopted the energetic and rapid iambic verse, formed 
for jest and wrangling; the latter seems to have only obtained gra- 
dually, chiefly through iEschylus, the form in which it seemed a fitting 
metre for the solemn and dignified language of heroes.f 

§ 7. In Phrynichus likewise, the son of Polyphradmon, of Athens, 
who was in great repute on the Athenian stage from Olymp. 67. 1. 
(b. c. 512), the lyric predominated over the dramatic element, lie, 
like Thespis, had only one actor, at least until .ZEschylus had established 
his innovations ; but he used this actor for different, and especially for 
female parts. Phrynichus was the first who brought female parts upon 
the stage (which, according to the manners of the ancients, could only 
be acted by men) ; a fact which throws a light upon his poetical cha- 
racter. The chief excellence of Phrynichus lay in dancing and lyric 
compositions ; if his works were extant, he would probably seem to us 
rather a lyric poet of the iEolian school than a dramatist. His tender, 
sweet, and often plaintive songs were still much admired in the time 
of the Peloponnesian war, especially by old-fashioned people. The 
chorus, as may be naturally supposed, played the chief part in his 
drama ; and the single actor was present in order to furnish subjects on 
which the chorus should express its feelings and thoughts, instead of the 
chorus being intended to illustrate the action represented upon the 
stage. It appears even that the great dramatic chorus (which originally 
corresponded to the dithyrambic) was distributed by Phrynichus into 
subdivisions, with different parts, in order to produce alternation and 
contrast in the long lyric compositions. Thus in the famous play of 
Phrynichus, entitled the Phcenisscc (which he brought upon the stage in 
Olymp. 75, 4, b. c. 476, and in which he celebrated the exploits of 
Athens in the Persian war), J the chorus consisted in part, as the name 
of the drama shows, of Phoenician women from Sidon and other cities of 
the neighbourhood, who had been sent to the Persian court ;§ but an- 

* Ch. XI. §. 8. 

| The fragments preserved under the name of Thespis are indeed iambic trime- 
ters ; hut they are evidently taken from the pieces composed by Heraclides Ponticus 
in his name. See Diog. Laert. V. 92. 

I It is related that Phrynichus composed a piece in Olymp. 75. 4 (n. o. 477) for 
a tragic chorus, which Themistocles had furnished as choregus. Bentley baa con- 
jectured with much probability that this piece was the PhoBnisse, in which Phry- 
nichus dwelt on the merits of Themistocles. Among the titles of the plays of 
Phrynichus in Suidas, 2*W«*m, "the consultors or deliberators," probably desig- 
nates the Phoenissse, which would otherwise be wanting. 

§ The chorus of Phoenician women sang at its entrance : — 'S.ibJiviov u<rru \ivoZo<t 
xa) fyofftgav " A^ado*, as maybe seen from the Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 220 and Hesych. 

in y'hUKi(>w 2/5ow<w. 



:?94 HISTORY OF THE 

other part of it was formed of noble Persians, who in the king's absence 
consulted about the affairs of the kingdom. For we know that at the 
beginning of this drama (which had a great resemblance to the Persians 
of jEschylus) a royal eunuch and carpet-spreader* came forward, who 
prepared the seats for this high council, and announced its meeting. 
The weighty cares of these aged men, and the passionate laments of 
the Phoenician damsels who had been deprived of their fathers or 
brothers by the sea-fight, doubtless made a contrast, in which one of 
the main charms of the drama consisted. It is remarkable that Phry- 
nichus, in several instances, deviated from mythical subjects to subjects 
taken from contemporary history. In a former drama, entitled the 
Capture of Miletus* he represented the calamities which had befallen 
Miletus, the colony and ally of Athens, at the Persian conquest, after 
the Ionic revolt (b. c. 498). Herodotus relates that the whole theatre 
was moved by it to tears ; notwithstanding which the people afterwards 
sentenced him to a considerable fine " for representing to them their 
own misfortunes ;" a remarkable judgment of the Athenians concerning 
a work of poetry, by which they manifestly expected to be raised into a 
higher world, not to be reminded of the miseries of the present life. 

§ 8. Contemporary with Phrynichus on the tragic stage was Chce- 
rilus, a prolific and, for a long time, active poet; since he came for- 
ward so early as the 64th Olympiad (b.c. 524), and maintained his 
ground not only against iEschylus, but even for some years against 
Sophocles. The most remarkable fact known with regard to this poet 
is, that he excelled in the satyric drama, t which had therefore in his 
time been separated from tragedy. For as tragedy constantly inclined 
to heroic fables, in preference to subjects connected with Dionysus, and 
as the rude style of the old Bacchic sport yielded to a more dignified 
and serious mode of composition, the chorus of satyrs was no longer 
an appropriate accompaniment. But it was the custom in Greece to 
retain and cultivate all the earlier forms of poetry which had anything 
peculiar and characteristic, together with the newer varieties formed 
from them. Accordingly a separate Salyric Drama was developed, in 
addition to tragedy; and, for the most part,| three tragedies and one 
satyric drama at the conclusion, were represented together, forming a 
connected whole. This satyric drama was not a comedy, but (as an 
ancient author aptly describes it) a playful tragedy. § Its subjects 
were taken from the same class of adventures of Bacchus and the 
heroes, as tragedy ; but they were so treated in connexion with rude 
objects of outward nature, that the presence and participation of rustic, 

f According to the verse : 'Hv'ixk ph p>a<riXtb$ h Xoieiko; h traru^ois. 
J For the most part, I say ; for we shall see, when we come to the Alcestis of 
Euripides, that tetralogies occur, composed of tragedies alone. 

o Ucc'ifyvtrct r^yyVioi, Demetrius de Elocut. § 169. Comp. Hor, Art. P. 231. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 

petulant satyrs seemed quite appropriate. Accordingly, all scenes from 
free, untamed nature, adventures of a striking character, where Bti 
monsters or savage tyrants of mythology are overcome by valour or 
stratagem, belong- to this class; and in such scenes as these the satyrs 
could express various feelings of terror and delight, disgust and desire, 
with all the openness and unreserve which belong to their character. 
All mythical subjects and characters were not therefore suited to the 
satyric drama. The character best suited to this drama seems to have 
been the powerful hero Hercules, an cater and drinker and boon com- 
panion, who, when he is in good humour, allows himself to be amused 
by the petulant sports of satyrs and other similar elves. 

§ 9. The complete separation of the satyric drama from the other 
dramatic varieties is attributed by ancient grammarians to Puatinas or 
Phlius, and therefore a Dorian from Peloponnesus, although he came 
forward in Athens as a rival of Chcerilus and JEschylus about Olymp. 
70 (b.c. 500), and probably still earlier. He also wrote lyric poems of 
the hyporchematic kind,* which are closely connected with the satyric 
drama ; f and he moreover composed tragedies ; but he chiefly excelled 
in the satyric drama, in the perfecting of which he probably followed 
native masters: for Phlius was a neighbour of Corinth and Sicyon, 
which produced the tragedy of Arion and Epigenes, represented by 
satyrs. He bequeathed his art to his son Aristeas, who, like his father, 
lived at Athens as a privileged alien, and obtained great fame on the 
Athenian stage in competition with Sophocles. The satyric pieces of 
these two Phliasians were considered, together with those of ^Eschylus, 
as the best of their kind. 

We are now come to the point where iEschylus appears on the tragic 
stage. Tragedy, as he received it, was still an infant, though a vigorous 
one ; when it passed from his hands it had reached a firm and goodly 
youth. By adding the second actor, he first gave the dramatic element 
its due development ; and at the same time he imparted to the whole 
piece the dignity and elevation of which it was susceptible. 

We should now proceed immediately to this first great mafeter of the 
tragic art, if it were not first necessary, for the purpose of forming a 
correct conception of his tragedy, to obtain a distinct idea of the ex- 
ternal appearance of this species of dramatic representation, and of the 
established forms with which every tragic poet must comply. Much 
may indeed be gathered from the history of the origin of the tragic 
drama; but this is not sufficient to give a full and li\ely notion of the 
manner in which a play of ^schylus was represented on the stage, and 
of the relation which its several parts bore to each other. 

•-•• Seech. XII. § 10. 

f Perhaps the hyporchemc in Athen. XIV. p. 017. occurred in a satyri.; drama. 



296 HISTORY OF THE 



CHAPTER XXII. 

§ 1. Ideal character of the Greek tragedy ; splendid costume of the actors. § 2. 
Cothurnus ; masks. § 3. Structure of the theatre. § 4. Arrangement of the 
orchestra in connexion with the form and position of the chorus. § 5. Form of 
the stage, and 'its meaning in tragedy. § 6. Meaning of the entrances of the 
stage. § 7. The actors ; limitation of their number. § 8. Meaning of the 
protagonist, deuteragonist, tritagonist. § 9. The changes of the scene incon- 
siderable ; ancient tragedy not being a picture of outward acts. § 10. Eccy- 
clema. § 11. Composition of the drama from various parts; songs of the 
entire chorus. § 12. Division of a tragedy by the choral songs. § 13. Songs 
of single persons of the chorus and of the actors. § 14. Parts of the drama 
intermediate between song and speech. § 15. Speech of the actors ; arrange- 
ment of the dialogue and its metrical form. 

§ 1. We shall now endeavour to arrive at a distinct conception of the 
peculiar character of ancient tragedy, as it appeared in those stable 
forms which the origin and taste of the Greeks impressed upon it. 

The tragedy of antiquity was perfectly different from that which, in 
progress of time, arose among other nations; — a picture of human life 
agitated by the passions, and corresponding, as accurately as possible, 
to its original in all its features. Ancient tragedy departs entirely 
from ordinary life ; its character is in the highest degree ideal. 

We must observe, first, that as tragedy, and indeed dramatic exhibi- 
tions generally, were seen only at the festivals of Bacchus * the cha- 
racter of these festivals exercised a great influence on the drama. It 
retained a sort of Bacchic colouring; it appeared in the character of a 
Bacchic solemnity and diversion ; and the extraordinary excitement of 
all minds at these festivals, by raising them above the tone of everyday 
existence, gave both to the tragic and the comic muse unwonted energy 
and fire. 

The costume of the persons who represented tragedy was far removed 
from that free and natural character which we find raised to the per- 
fection of beauty by the Greeks in the arts of design. It was a Bacchic 
festal costume. Almost all the actors in a tragedy wore long striped 
garments, reaching to the ground,! over which were thrown upper 

* In Athens new tragedies were acted at the Lenaea and the great Dionysia ; the 
latter being a most brilliant festival, at which the allies of Athens and many 
foreigners were also present. Old tragedies also were acted at the Lenaea ; and none 
but old ones were acted at the lesser Dionysia. These facts appear, in great mea- 
sure, from the didascalice ; that is, registers of the victories of the lyric and dramatic 
poets as teachers of the chorus (^«^/5«,7x*Xo/), from which, through the learned 
writers of antiquity, much has passed into the commentaries on the remains of Greek 
poetry, especially the arguments prefixed to them. 

f %iravi$ Trobnous, aroXed. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT OREF.( K. :> l )l 

garments* of purple or some other brilliant colour, with all sorts o! 
trimmings and gold ornaments; the ordinary dress at Bacchic festal 
processions and choral dances. f Nor was the Hercules of the stage 
represented as the sturdy athletic hero whose huge limbs were only 
concealed by a lion's hide; he appeared in the rich and gaudy dress 
we have described, to which his distinctive attributes, the club and the 
bow, were merely added. The choruses, also, which were furnished by 
wealthy citizens under the appellation of choregi, in the names of the 
tribes of Athens, vied with each other in the splendour of their dress 
and ornaments, as well as in the excellence of their singing and dancing. 

§ 2. The chorus, which came from among the people at large, and 
which always bore a subordinate part in the action of the tragedy, was 
in no respect distinguished from the stature and appearance of ordinary 
men. J On the other hand, the actor who represented the god or hero, 
in whose fate the chorus was interested, needed to be raised, even to the 
outward sense, above the usual dimensions of mortals. A tragic actor 
was a very strange, and, according to the taste of the ancients themselves 
at a later period, a very monstrous being.§ His person was lengthened 
out considerably beyond the ordinary proportions of the human figure ; 
in the first place by the very high soles of the tragic shoe, the cothurnus, 
and secondly by the length of the tragic mask, called onkos ; and the 
chest and body, arms and legs, were stuffed and padded to a corre- 
sponding size. It was impossible that the body should not lose much 
of its natural flexibility, and that many of those slighter movements 
which, though barely perceptible, are very significant to the attentive 
observer, should not be suppressed. It followed that tragic gesticulation 
(which was regarded by the ancients themselves as one of the most im- 
portant parts of the art) necessarily consisted of stiff, angular move- 
ments, in which little was left to the emotion or the inspiration of the 
moment. The Greeks, prone to vehement and lively gesticulation, had 
constructed a system of expressive gesture, founded on their tem- 
perament and manners. On the tragic stage this seemed raised to its 
highest pitch, corresponding always with the powerful emotions of the 
actors. 

Masks, also, which originated in the taste for mumming and dis- 
guises of all sorts, prevalent at the Bacchic festivals, had become an 

* ifid-ria and %\a. t uvh;. 

f This is evident from the detailed accounts of Pollux IV. c. 18, as well as from 
works of ancient art, representing scenes of tragedies, especially the mosaics in the 
Vatican, edited by Millin. See Description d'une Mosaique antique du MuseePio* 
Clementin a Rome, representant des scenes <le tragedies, par A. L. Millin, Paris, 
1819. 

I The opposition of the chorus and the scenic actors is generally that of the 
Homeric \u.o) and eLwftru* 

§ 'ft? iih%6lg xu) <po/Si^ov Oia.fx.ct, is the remark of Lucian do Baltat. & 27, upon a 
tragic actor. 



298 HISTORY OP THE 

indispensable accompaniment to tragedy. They not only concealed the 
individual features of well-known actors, and enabled the spectators 
entirely to forget the performer in his part, but gave to his whole aspect 
that ideal character which the tragedy of antiquity demanded. The tragic 
mask was not, indeed, intentionally ugly and caricatured, like the comic ; 
but the half-open mouth, the large eye-sockets, the sharply-defined fea- 
tures, in which every characteristic was presented in its utmost strength, 
the bright and hard colouring, were calculated to make the impression 
of a being agitated by the emotions and the passions of human nature 
in a degree far above the standard of common life. The loss of the usual 
gesticulation was not felt in ancient tragedy; since it would not have 
been forcible enough to suit the conception of an ancient hero, nor 
would it have been visible to the majority of the spectators in the vast 
theatres of antiquity. The unnatural effect which a set and uniform 
cast of features would produce in tragedy of varied passion and action, 
like ours, was much less striking in ancient tragedy ; wherein the prin- 
cipal persons, once forcibly possessed by certain objects and emotions, 
appeared through the whole remaining piece in a state of mind which 
was become the habitual and fundamental character of their existence. 
It is possible to imagine the Orestes of iEschylus, the Ajax of Sopho- 
cles, the Medea of Euripides, throughout the whole tragedy with the 
same countenance, though this would be difficult in the case of Hamlet 
or Tasso. The masks could, however, be changed between the acts, 
so as to represent the necessary changes in the state or emotions of the 
persons. Thus in the tragedy of Sophocles, after King CEdipus knows 
the extent of his calamity and has executed the bloody punishment on 
himself, he appeared in a different mask from that which he wore in the 
confidence of virtue and of happiness. 

We shall not enter into the question whether the masks of the ancients 
were also framed with a view to increase the power of the voice. It is, 
at least, certain that the voices of the tragic actors had a strength and 
a metallic resonance, which must have been the result of practice, no 
less than of natural organization. Various technical expressions of the 
ancients denote this sort of tone, drawn from the depth of the chest,* 
which filled the vast area of the theatre with a monotonous sort of 
chant. This, even in the ordinary dialogue, had more resemblance to 
singing than to the speech of common life; and in its unwearied uni- 
formity and distinctly measured rhythmical cadence, must have seemed 
like the voice of some more powerful and exalted being than earth could 
then produce, resounding through the ample space. 

§ 3. But before we examine further into the impressions which the 
ear received from the tragedy of antiquity, we must endeavour to 
complete the outline of those made upon the eye; and to give such an 

* Sof/fiiiv, Xocpjyyl'Ciw, especially ^xu^i^uv, rtigtefiuv r« letpfZiTu in Lucian. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT Q 2D!) 

account of the place of representation and the rrengemeni 

properly belongs to a history of literature. The ancient taeat 
stone buildings of enormous size, calculated to accommodate the whole 
free and adult population of a Greek city at the spectacles and festal 
games ; for example, the 10,000 Athenian citizens, with the educated 
women and many foreigners. These theatres were not designed 
clusively for dramatic poetry; choral dances, festal processions, and 
revels, all sorts of representations of public life and popular aa 
were held in them. Hence we find theatres in every part of (ii> 
though dramatic poetry was the peculiar growth of Athens. Much, 
however, in theatrical architecture, such as it became in Athens, where 
the forms were determined by fixed rules, can only be explained by the 
adaptation of those forms to dramatic exhibitions. 

The Athenians began to build their stone theatre in the temple of 
Dionysus on the south side of the citadel,* in Olymp. 70. 1. B.C. 500 ; 
the wooden scaffolding, from which the people had heretofore witnessed 
the games, having fallen down in that year. It must very soon have 
been so far completed as to render it possible for the master-pieces of 
the three great tragedians to be represented in it; though perhaps the 
architectural decorations of all the parts were finished later. As early 
as the Peloponnesian war, singularly beautiful theatres were built in 
Peloponnesus and Sicily. 

§ 4. The whole structure of the theatre, as well as the drama itself, 
may be traced to the chorus, whose station was the original centre of 
the whole performance. Around this all the rest was grouped. The 
orchestra (which occupied a circular level space in the centre, and, at the 
same time, at the bottom of the whole building) grew out of the chorus, 
or dancing place, of the Homeric times ;f a level smooth space, huge 
and wide enough for the unrestrained movements of a numerous band 
of dancers. The altar of Dionysus, around which the dithviambic 
chorus danced in a circle, had given rise to a sort of raised platform 
in the centre of the orchestra, the Thymc/c, which served as resting- 
place for the chorus when it took up a stationary position. It was u>vd 
in various ways, according to purposes required by the particuhu tra- 
gedy ; whether as a funereal monument, a terrace with altars, i 

* To \l AlOVUffOV 6'iKTfOV OX TO AlOVlHTOU ilKTpoV. 

f Above, ch. III. § 6. 

{ It is sufficient here briefly to remark, that the form of the ancient Attic thi 
should not be confounded with that usual in the Macedonian period, in Alexandria, 
Antiochia, and similar cities. In the latter, the original orchestra was divided into 
halves, and the half which was nearest the stage, was, by means of a platform of 
boards, converted into a spacious inferior stage, upon which the mimes or plat 
darii, as well as musicians and dancers, played ; while the stage, strictly so called. 
continued to be appropriated to the tragic and comic acturs. This division ol 
orchestra was then called thymele, or even orchestra, in the limited mum of thy 
word. 



300 HISTORY OP THE 

The chorus iSself, in its transition from lyric to dramatic poetry, had 
undergone a total change of form. As a dithyrambic chorus, it moved 
in a ring around the altar which served as a centre, and had a com- 
pletely independent character and action. As a dramatic chorus, it 
was connected with the action of the stage, was interested in what was 
passing there, and must therefore, of necessity, front the stage. Hence, 
according to the old grammarians, the chorus of the drama was qua- 
drangular, i. e., arranged so that the dancers, when standing in their 
regular places in rows and groups (ort'^ot and £vya), formed right 
angles. In this form it passed through the wide side-entrances of the 
orchestra (the 7rapo£oi) into the centre of it, where it arranged itself 
between the thymele and the stage in straight lines. The number of 
dancers in the tragic chorus was probably reduced from fifty, the 
number of the choreutae in the dithyrambic chorus, in the following 
manner. First, a quadrangular chorus, of forty-eight persons, was 
formed ; and this was divided into four parts or sets which met toge- 
ther. This hypothesis will explain many difficulties; for example, how 
it is that, at the end of the Eumenides of iEschylus, two separate 
choruses, the Furies and the festal train, come on the stage together.* 
The chorus of ^Eschylus accordingly consisted of twelve persons ; at a 
later period Sophocles increased them to fifteen, which was the regular 
number in the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. t 

The places occupied by the choral dancers were all determined by 
established usages, the main object of which was to afford the public 
the most favourable view of the chorus, and to bring into the foreground 
the handsomest and best dressed of the choreutae. The usual move- 
ments of the tragic chorus were solemn and stately, as beseemed the 
dignified venerable persons, such as matrons and old men, who fre- 
quently appeared in them. The tragic, style of dancing, called Emme- 
leia, is described as the most grave and solemn of the public dances. 

§ 5. Although the chorus not only sang alone, when the actors had 
quitted the stage, but sometimes sang alternately with the persons of 
the drama, and sometimes entered into dialogue with them, yet it did 
not, in general, stand on the same level with them, but on a raised 
stage or platform, considerably higher than the orchestra. But as the 
orchestra and the stage were not only contiguous, '.but joined, our in- 
formation on this point is by no means so clear as might be wished. 
To the eye of the spectator the relation in which the persons of the 
drama stood to the chorus was determined by their appearance; the 

* The same fact also throws a light on the number of the chorus of comedy, 
twenty-four. This was half the tragic chorus, since comedies were not acted by- 
fours, but singly. 

f The accounts of the ancient grammarians respecting the arrangements of the 
chorus refer to the chorus of fifteen persons ; as their accounts respecting the 
arrangements of the stage refer to the three actors. The reason was, that the form 
of the ^Eschylean tragedy had become obsolete. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. HlH 

former, heroes of the mythical world, whose whole aspect bespoke some- 
thing mightier and more sublime than ordinary humanity; the latter, 
generally composed of men of the people, whose part it was to show the 
impression made by the incidents of the drama on lower and feebler 
minds; and thus, as it were, interpret them to the audience, with 
whom they owned a more kindred nature. The ancient stage was 
remarkably long, but of little depth. It was but a small segment cut 
from the circle of the orchestra; but it extended on either side so far 
that its length was'nearly double the diameter of the orchestra.* This 
form of the stage is founded on the artistical taste of the ancients gene- 
rally ; and again, influenced their dramatic representation in a remark- 
able manner. As ancient sculpture delighted above all things in the 
long lines of figures, which we see in the pediments and friezes, and 
as even the painting of antiquity placed single figures in perfect outline 
near each other, but clear and distinct, and rarely so closely grouped as 
that one intercepted the view of another; so also the persons on the 
stage, the heroes and their attendants (who were often numerous), stood 
in long rows on this long and narrow stage. The persons who came 
from a distance were never seen advancing from the back of the stage, 
but from the side, whence they often had to walk a considerable dis- 
tance before they reached the centre where the principal actors stood. 
The oblong space which the stage formed was inclosed on three sides 
by high walls, the hinder one of which "alone was properly called the 
Scene, the narrow walls on the right and left were styled Parasccfiitt, 
the stage itself was called in accurate language, not scene, but Pro- 
scenium, because it was in front of the scene. Scene properly means 
a tent or hut, and such was doubtless erected of wood by the earliest 
beginners of dramatic performances, to mark the dwelling of the prin- 
cipal person represented by the actor. Out of this he came forth into 
the open space, and into this he retired again. 

And although this poor and small hut at length gave place to the 
stately scene, enriched with architectural decorations, yet its purpose 
and destination remained essentially the same. It was the dwelling of 
the principal person or persons; the proscenium was the space in front 
of it, and the continuation of this space was the orchestra. Thus the 
scene might represent a camp with the tent of the hero, as in the Ajax 
of Sophocles ; a wild region of wood and rock, with a cave for a 
dwelling place, as in the Philoctetes; but its usual purport and deco- 

* Those readers who wish for more precise information about architectural mea- 
sures and proportions may consult the beautiful plan given by Donaldson, in the 
supplemental volume to Stuart's Antiquities of Athens, London, 1830, p. 33. It 
should, however, be observed, that the projecting sides of the proscenium, which 
Donaldson has assumed with Ilirt, are not supported by any ancient testimony, imr 
can they be justified by any requirement of the dramatic representations of the 
Greeks. The space required for these projections ought rather to be allotted to the 
side entrances of the orchestra, the xa^ohot. 



302 HISTORY OP THE 

ration were the front of a chieftain's palace with its colonnades, roofs 
and towers, together with all the accessory buildings which could be 
erected on the stage, with more or less of finish and of adaptation to 
the special exigencies of the tragedy. Sometimes also it exhibited a 
temple, with the buildings and arrangements appertaining to a Grecian 
sanctuary. But in every case it is the front alone of the palace or the 
temple that is seen, not the interior. 

In the life of antiquity, everything great and important, all the main 
actions of family or political interest, passed in the open air and in the 
view of men. Even social meetings took place rather in public halls, 
in market-places and streets, than in rooms and chambers ; and the 
habits and actions, which were confined to the interior of a house, were 
never regarded as forming subjects for public observation. Accord- 
ingly, it was necessary that the action of the drama should come 
forth from the interior of the house ; and tragic poets were compelled 
to comply strictly with this condition in the invention and plan of their 
dramatic compositions. The heroic personages, when about to give 
utterance to their thoughts and feelings, came forth into the court in 
front of their houses. From the other side came the chorus out of the 
city or district in which the principal persons dwelt ; they assembled, 
as friends or neighbours might, to offer their counsel or their sym- 
pathy to the principal actors on the stage, on some open space; often 
a market-place designed for popular meetings ; such as, in the monar- 
chical times of Greece, was commonly attached to the prince's palace. 

Far from shocking received notions, the performance of choral dances 
in this place was quite in accordance with Greek usages. Anciently, 
these market-places w r ere specially designed for numerous popular 
choruses; they even themselves bore the name of chorus.* When the 
stage and the whole theatre had been adapted for this kind of repre- 
sentation, it was necessary that comedy also should conform to it ; even 
in those productions which exclusively represented the incidents and 
passions of private and domestic life. In the imitations of the later 
Attic comedy which we owe to Plautus and Terence, the stage repre- 
sents considerable portions of streets; the houses of the persons of the 
drama are distinguishable, interspersed with public buildings and 
temples; every thing is arranged by the poet with the utmost attention 
to effect ; and generally to nature and probability, so that the actors, in 
all their goings and comings, their entrances and exits, their meetings 
in the streets and at their doors, may disclose just so much of their 
sentiments and their projects as it is necessary or desirable for the 
spectator to know. 

§ 6. The massive and permanent walls of the stage had certain 
openings which, although differently decorated for different pieces, were 

* Ch. III. § 6. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 30.3 

never changed. Each of these entrances to the stage had its establish d 
and permanent signification, and this enabled the spectator to apprehend 

many things at the first glance, which he must have otherwise gradually 
made out in the course of the piece; since contrivances similar to our 
play-bills were unknown to the ancients. On the other hand, the 
audience came furnished with certain preliminary information concerning 
what they were about to witness, by means of which the plot was far 
more clear to them than it can now be by mere reading. Of this kind 
was the distinct meaning attached to the right and the left side. The 
theatre at Athens was built on the south side of the Acropolis, in such 
a manner that a person standing on the stage saw the greater part of 
the city and the harbour on his left, and the country of Attica on his 
right. Hence, a man who entered on the right by the parascenia, was 
invariably understood to come from the country, or from afar; on the 
left, from the city, or the neighbourhood. The two side-walls always 
bore the same relation to each other in the arrangements, as to exterior 
or interior. Of course, the lower side entrance which led into the 
orchestra, stood in the same relation ; but of these, the right one was 
little used, because the chorus generally consisted of inhabitants of the 
place, or of the immediate neighbourhood. The main wall, however, or 
the scene, properly so called, had three doors ; the middle, which was 
called the royal door, represented the principal entrance to the palace, 
the abode of the prince himself; that on the right was held to be a 
passage leading without, especially to the apartments of the guests, 
which in Greek houses were often in a detached building appropriated 
to that purpose; that on the left, more towards the interior, leading to 
a part of the house not obvious to the first approach ; such as a shrine, 
a prison, the apartments of the women, &c. 

§ 7. But the Greeks carried still further this association of certain 
localities with certain incidents or appearances. The moment an actor 
entered, they could decide upon his part and his relation to the whole 
drama. And here we come to the point in which the Greek drama 
seems the most fettered by inflexible rules, and forced into forms which 
appear, to our feelings, stiff and unnatural. Grecian art, however, as 
we have often had occasion to remark, in all its manifestations, loves 
distinct and unvarying forms, which take possession of the mind with 
all the force of habit, and immediately put it into a certain frame and 
temper. If, on the one hand, these forms appear to cramp (be 
creative genius, to check the free course of the fancy; on the other, 
works of art, which have a given measure, a prescribed form, to fill out, 
acquire, when this form is animated by a corresponding spirit, a peculiar 
stability which seems to raise them above the caprieious and ephemeral 
productions of the human mind, and to assimilate them to the eternal 



304 HISTORY OF THE 

works of nature, where the most rigorous conformity to laws is com- 
bined with boundless variety and beauty. 

In the dramatic poetry of Greece, indeed, the outward form to which 
genius is forced to adapt itself, appears the more rigid, and, we may 
say arbitrary, since, to the conditions imposed on the choice of thoughts, 
expression and metre, are added rules, prescribed by the local and 
personal character of the representation. With regard to the persons 
of the drama, the ancients show that historical taste which consists in 
a singular union of attachment to given forms, with aspiration after 
further progress. The antique type is never unnecessarily rejected; 
but is rendered susceptible of a greater display of creative power by 
expansions which may be said to lie in its very nature. 

We have seen how a single actor was detached from the chorus, and 
how Thespis and Phrynichus contented themselves with this arrange- 
ment, by causing him to represent in succession all the persons of the 
drama, and either before, or with the chorus, to conduct the whole action 
of the piece. iEschylus added the second actor, in order to obtain the 
contrast of two acting persons on the stage, since the general character 
of the chorus was that of a mere hearer or recipient ; and although ca- 
pable of expressing its own wishes, hopes, and fears, it was not adapted 
to independent action. According to this form, only two speaking 
persons (mutes might be introduced in any number) could appear on 
the stage at the same time : — they, however, might both enter again in 
other characters, time only being allowed for change of dress. The 
appearance of the same actor in different parts of the same play did not 
strike the ancients as more extraordinary than his appearance in dif- 
ferent parts in different plays ; since the persons of the actors were 
effectually disguised by masks, and their skill enabled them to represent 
various characters with perfect success. The dramatic art of those 
times required extraordinary natural gifts; strength of body and of 
voice, as well as a most careful education and training for the pro- 
fession. 

- From the time of the great poets, and even later, in the age of 
Philip and Alexander, when the interest and character of dramatic 
performance rested entirely on the actors, the number of actors capable 
of satisfying the taste and judgment of the public was always very 
small. Hence, it was an object to turn the talents of the few eminent 
actors to the greatest possible account ; and to prevent that injury to 
the general effect which the interposition of inferior actors, even in 
subordinate parts, must ever produce ; and, in fact, so often nowadays 
does produce. Even Sophoch-s did not venture beyond the introduction 
of a third actor ; this appeared to accomplish all that was necessary to 
the variety and mobility of action in tragedy, without sacrificing the 



LITERATURK OP ANCIENT GREECE. 805 

simplicity and clearness which, in the good ages of antiquity, 
always held to be the most essential qualities. ^Eschylus adopted this 
third actor in the three connected plays, the Agamemnon, Choephors, 
and Eumenides; which he seems to have brought out at Athens at the 
end of his career. His other tragedies, which were performed earlier, 
are all so constructed tliat they could be represented by two actors.* 
All the plays of Sophocles and Euripides are adapted for three aeiors 
only, excepting one, the (Edipus in Colonus, which could not be acted 
without the introduction of a fourth. The rich and intricate composition 
of this noble drama would have been impossible without this innovation. t 
But even Sophocles himself does not appear to have dared to introduce 
it on the stage. It is known that the (Edipus in Colonus was not acted 
till after his death, when it was brought out by Sophocles the younger. 

§ 8. But the ancients laid more stress upon the precise number and 
the mutual relations of these three actors than might be inferred from 
what has been said. They distinguished them by the technical names 
of Protagonistes, Deuteragonistes, and Tritagonistes. These names are 
used with different meanings. Sometimes the actors themselves are 
designated by their parts ; as, for example, when Cleandrus is called the 
protagonist of iEschylus, and Myniscus his deuteragouist ; or when 
Demosthenes, in his contest with iEschines, says, that to represent 
such a stern and cruel tyrant as Creon in the Antigone, is the peculiar 
glory and privilege of the tritagonist; /Eschines himself having 
served under more distinguished actors as tritagonist. Sometimes the 
persons entering the stage are distinguished by these three names : as 
when Pollux the grammarian says, that the protagonist should always 
enter from the middle door ; that the dwelling of the deuteragouist 
should be on the right hand, and that of the third person of the drama 
on the left. According to a passage in a modern Platonic philosopher,]: 
important to the history of the ancient drama, the poet does not create 
the protagonist, deuteragonist, or tritagonist ; he only gives to each of 
these actors his appropriate part. 

This, and other expressions of the ancients have involved the subject 
in many perplexing difficulties, which it would detain us too long to 
examine in detail. Our purpose will be best accomplished by giving 
such a summary explanation as will enable these distinctions to be 
understood. 

* The prologue of the Prometheus appeals, indeed, to require three actors Q>l 
the parts of Prometheus, Hephsstus, and Cratosj but these might have bei 
arranged, so as not to require a third actor. 

f Unless we assume that the part of Theseus in this play was partly acted 
by the person who represented Antigone, and partly by the person who represented 
Ismene. It is, however, far more difficult for two actors to represent sjm part in 
the same tone and spirit, than for one actor to represent tevtrtU parts with the appro- 
priatc modifications! 

JPlotin.Knnead.ii L. ii.p. 268. Basil p. 484. Creuser. Cotnpero tha no 
Creuzer, vol. hi. p. 1 6J, sd. Oxon. 

X 



306 HISTORY OF THE 

The tragedy of antiquity originated in the delineation of a suffering 
or passion (~o£oc), and remained true to its first destination. Sometimes 
it is outward suffering, danger, and injury ; sometimes, rather inward; 
a fierce struggle of the soul, a grievous burthen on the spirit; but it is 
always one passion, in the largest sense of the word, which claims the 
sympathy of the audience. The person, then, whose fate excites this 
sympathy, whose outward or inward wars and conflicts are exhibited, 
is the protagonist. In the four dramas which require only two actors, 
the protagonist is easily distinguished : in the Prometheus, the chained 
Titan himself; in the Persians, Atossa, torn with anxiety for the fate of 
the army and the kingdom ; in the Seven against Thebes, Eteocles 
driven by his father's curse to fratricide ; in the Suppliants, Danaus, 
the fugitive, seeking a new home. The deuteragonist, in this form 
of the drama, is not, in general, the author of the sufferings of the 
protagonist. This is some external power, which, in these tragedies, 
is not brought to view. His only function is to call forth the expres- 
sions of the various emotions of the protagonist, sometimes by 
friendly sympathy, sometimes by painful tidings: as for example, in 
the Prometheus, Oceanus, Io, and Hermes, are all parts of the 
deuteragonist. The protagonist may also appear in other parts ; but 
the tragedian generally sought to concentrate all the force and ac- 
tivity of the piece on one part. When a tritagonist is introduced, he 
generally acts as instigator or cause of the sufferings of the protagonist ; 
although himself the least pathetic or sympathetic person of the drama, 
he is yet the occasion of situations by which pity and interest for the 
principal person are powerfully excited. To the deuteragonist fall 
the parts in which, though distinguished by a lofty ardour of feeling, 
there is not the vehemence and depth appropriate to the protago- 
nist ; feebler characters, with calmer blood and less daring aspiration 
of mind, whom Sophocles is fond of attaching to his heroes as a sort of 
foil, to bring out their full force. But even these sometimes display a 
peculiar beauty and elevation of character. Thus the gradation of these 
three kinds of parts depends on the degree in which the one part is 
calculated to excite pity and anxiety, and to command, generally, the 
sympathy of the audience. If we look over the titles of the plays of 
the three great tragedians, we shall find that, when they are not 
derived from the chorus, or the general subject of the piece, they always 
consist of the names of the persons to whom the chief interest attaches. 
Antigone, Electra, CEdipus, the king and the exile, Ajax, Philoctetes, 
Dejanira, Medea, Hecuba, Ion, Hippolytus, &c, are unquestionably all 
protagonistic parts * 

* A move detailed illustration of this point, which would lead to investigations 
into the structure of the several tragedies, is not consistent with the plan of the 
pieseiit work. We will, however, state the distribution of the parte in several 
tragedies, which seems to us the most probable. In the extant trilogy of >3vschylus, 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT G 

It was the great endeavour of Greek art to exhibit the character ami 
rank of" the individuals whom it grouped together, ami to preseni to the 
eye a symmetrical image, corresponding with the idea of the action which 
was to be represented. The protagonist, as the person whose fate 

the centre around which all revolved, must therefore occupy the cei 
of the stage; the deuteragonist and tritagonist approached him from 
either side. Hence it was an invariable rule for the protagonist Q< 
to leave the stage by either of the side-doors. If, however, he came 
from abroad, like Agamemnon and Orestes in yEschylus, Ik- \ b 
through the middle door into the interior of the palate, which was his 
habitation.' With regard to the deuteragonist and tritagonist, man) 
difficulties must have arisen from the local meaning attached to the two 
side doors; but, if space sufficed for such detailed explanations, we 
might show, from numerous examples, how the tragic poets found 
means to fulfil all these conditions. 

§ 9. Changes of scene were very seldom necessary in ancient tragedy. 
The Greek tragedies are so constructed that the speeches and actions, 
of which they are mainly composed, might with perfect propriety ; 
on one spot, and indeed ought generally to pass in the court in front 
of the royal house. The actions to which no speech is attached, and 
which do not serve to develope thoughts and feelings, (such as 
Eteocles' combat with his brother; the murder of Agamemnon; 
Antigone's performance of the obsequies of Polyniccs, &c), are 
imagined to pass behind or without the scene, and are only related 
on the stage. Hence the importance of the parts of messengers and 
heralds in ancient tragedy. The poet was not influenced only hy the 
reason given by Horace,* viz., that bloody spectacles and incredible 
events excite less horror and doubt when related, and ought tlwn 
not to be produced on the stage : there was also the far deeper general 
reason, that it is never the outward act with which the interest of ancient 

the problem must he to preserve the same part for the same actor through all the 
three plays. 

iProtag. Agamemnon, guard, herald. 
Deulerag. Cassandra, vEgisthus. 
Trilag. Clytajmnestia. 
{Prolog. Orestes. 
Deuterog. Eleetra, /Egisthus, Exangelos. 
Tritag. Clytannncstra, female attendant. 
(Prolog. Orestes. 
Deuterog. Apollo. 
Tritag. Pythias, Clytannnestra, Athene. 
For Sophocles, the Antigone and the CEdipus Tyramms may wm as example* 

{ Prolog. Antig one. Tires ias, Kuiydiee. K\ani;elos. 
Deuierag. Ismene, guard, Hemon, i 
Tritag. Creon. 
{Prolog. CEdipus. 
Deuterog. Priest, Jucasla. servant. Exangelos. 
Tritag, Creon Tiresiat, messenger. 

* Art. Poet. 180. sq. 

x2 



308 HISTORY OP THE 

tragedy is most intimately bound up. The action which forms the basis 
of every tragedy of those times is internal and spiritual; the reflections, 
resolutions, feelings, the mental or moral phenomena, which can be 
expressed in speech, are developed on the stage. For outward action, 
which is generally mute, or, at all events, cannot be adequately repre- 
sented by words, the epic form — narration — is the only appropriate 
vehicle. Battles, single combats, murders, sacrifices, funerals, and the 
like, whatever in mythology is accomplished by strength of hand, passes 
behind the scenes; even when it might, without any considerable diffi- 
culty, be performed in front of them. Exceptions, such as the chaining 
of Prometheus, and the suicide of Ajax, are rather apparent than real, 
and indeed serve to confirm the general rule ; since it is only on 
account of the peculiar psychological state of Prometheus when bound, 
and of Ajax at the time of his suicide, that the outward acts are brought 
on the stage. Moreover, the costume of tragic actors was calculated 
for impressive declamation, and not for action. The lengthened and 
stuffed out figures of the tragic actors would have had an awkward, not 
to say a ludicrous effect, in combat or other violent action.* From the 
sublime to the ridiculous would here have been but one step, which 
antique tragedy carefully avoided risking. 

Thus it was rather from reasons inherent in its nature, than from 
obedience to prescribed rules, that Greek tragedy observed, with few 
exceptions, unity of plan ; and hence it required no arrangement for a 
complete change of scenic decorations, which was first introduced in 
the Roman theatre. f In Athens all the necessary changes were 
effected by means of the Periactce, erected in the corners of the stage. 
These were machines of the form of a triangular prism, which turned 
round rapidly and presented three different surfaces. On the side 
which was supposed to represent foreign parts, it afforded at each 
turn a different perspective view, while, on the home side, some single 
near object alone was changed. For example, the transition from 
the temple of Delphi to the temple of Pallas on the Acropolis of Athens, 
in the Eumenides of TEschylus, was effected in this manner. No 
greater change of scene than this takes place in any extant Greek 
tragedy. Where different but neighbouring places are represented, the 
great length of the stage sufficed to contain them all, especially as the 
Greeks required no exact and elaborate imitation of reality: a slight 
indication was sufficient to set in activity their quick and mobile ima- 
ginations. In the Ajax of Sophocles, the half of the stage on the left 
hand represents the Grecian camp ; the tent of Ajax, which must be 
in the centre, terminates the right wing of this camp ; on the right, is 

* According to Lucian, Somoium sive Gallus, c. 26, it wag ludicrous to see a 
person fall with the cothurnus, 
f The scena duclilis and xer silts, 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 809 

seen a lonely forest with a distant view of the sea; here Ajax en! 
when he is about to destroy himself; so that he is visible to the au- 
dience, but cannot for a long time be seen by the Chorus, which is in 
the side space of the orchestra. 

§ 10. On the other hand, ancient tragedy was required to fulfil 
another condition, which could only co-exist with such a conception of 
the locality as has been just described. It is this : the proscenium 
or stage represents a space in the open air : what passes here is in 
public ; even in confidential discourse the presence of witnesses is always 
to be feared. But it was occasionally necessary 1o place before the 
spectator a scene which was confined to the interior of the house ; for 
example, when the plan and the idea of the piece required what is 
called a tragic situation, that is, a living picture, in which a whole 
series of affecting images are crowded together. Scenes of this tre- 
mendous power are: that in which Clytaimnestra with the bloody sword 
stands over the bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra, holding the gar- 
ment in which she has entangled her unfortunate husband ; and, in 
the succeeding tragedy of the same trilogy, that in which Orestes is seen 
on precisely the same spot, where the same bathing robe now covers the 
bodies of iEgisthus and Clytiemnestra. Or, in the tragedy of Sophocles, 
Ajax, standing among the animals which he has slaughtered in his 
frenzy, taking them for the princes of the Greek host, and now, sunk 
in the deepest melancholy, contemplates the efFects of his madness. 
It is easy to perceive that it is not the acts themselves in the moment 
of execution; but the circumstances, arising out of those acts when 
accomplished, which occupied the reflections and the feelings of 
the chorus and of the audience. To bring on the stage groups like 
these, (in the choice and disposition of which we recognize the 
plastic genius of the age that produced a Phidias,) and to bring to 
view the interior of dwellings hidden behind the scenes, machines were 
used, called Eccyclema and Exostra (the one being rolled, the other 
pushed forward). It were presumptuous to attempt to describe the 
construction of these machines from the slight indications we could 
gather from the grammarians ; but their working may be clearly per- 
ceived in the tragedians themselves. The side doors of a palace or 
tent are thrown open, and in the same moment an .inner chamber with 
its appropriate decorations is distinctly seen on the stage, where it 
remains as a central point of the dramatic action, till the progress of 
the drama requires its disappearance in the same manner. We may 
fairly presume that these local representations were far from rude or 
tasteless ; that they were worthy of the feeling for beauty, and the fa 
of the age and nation which produced them; especially in the latter 
years of /Eschylus, and during the whole career of Sophocles, when 
the mathematicians, Anaxagoras and Democritus, had begun to study 



310 HISTORY OF THE 

perspective with a view to the stage ; while the scene-painting- of 
Agatharehus gave rise to a peculiar branch of that art,* which, by 
means of light and shadow, produced more perfect imitations of real 
bodies than had been heretofore known. 

Machinery for raising figures from beneath the stage, or bearing 
them through the air, for the imitation of thunder and lightning, &c. 
arrived at sufficient perfection in the time of the three great tragedians 
to accomplish its end. The tragedies of iEschylus, especially Prome- 
theus, prove that he was not unjustly reproached with a great love for 
fantastic appearances ; such as winged cars, and strange hippogryphs, 
on which deities, like Oceanus and his daughters, were borne on the 
stage. 

§ 11. We believe that we have now brought before our readers the 
principal features of Greek tragedy, such as it appeared to the spec- 
tator when represented in the theatre. But it is equally necessary, 
before we venture upon an estimate of the several tragedians, to offer 
some remarks on the combination of the several parts or elements of a 
Greek tragedy ; since this also involves much that is not implied in 
the general notion of a drama, and can only be elucidated by the 
peculiar historical origin of the tragic art in Greece. 

Ancient Grecian tragedy consists of a union of lyric poetry and 
dramatic discourse, which may be analyzed in different ways. The 
chorus may be distinguished from the actors, song from dialogue, the 
lyrical element from the strictly dramatic. But the most convenient 
distinction, in the first place, is that suggested by Aristotle, j- between 
the song of many voices and the song or speech of a single person. The 
first belongs to the chorus only ; the second to the chorus or the actors. 
The many-voiced songs of the chorus have a peculiar and determinate 
signification for the whole tragedy. They were called stasimon when 
they were sung by the chorus in its proper place, in the middle of the 
orchestra, and parodos when sung by the chorus while advancing 
through the side entrance of the orchestra, or otherwise moving towards 
the place where it arranged itself in its usual order. The difference 
between the parodos and the stasimon consists mainly in this, — that the 
former more frequently begins with long series of anapaestic systems, 
which were peculiarly adapted to a procession or march ; or a system 
of this sort was introduced between the lyrical songs. As to the signi- 
fication of these songs, the situation of the actors, and the action itself, 
form the subjects of reflection, and the emotions which they excite in a 
sympathizing and benevolent mind are expressed. The parodos chiefly 
explains the entrance of the chorus and its sympathy in the business of 
the drama, while the stasima develop this sympathy in the various forms 

* Called trKWsyaoLpiu or ffKiay^ln. f Poet. 12. 



LITERATURE Of ANfiENT 0111 111! 

which the progress of tlie action causes it to assume. As tlu 
generally, represented the ideal spectator, whose mode of viewing th 

was to guide and control the impressions of the assembled people, so it 
was the peculiar province of the stasimon, amidst the press and tiuimlt of 
the action, to maintain that composure of Blind which Ibe Greeks deemed 
indispensable to the enjoyment of a work of art; and to di\est the 
action of the accidental and personal, in order to place in a clearer light 
its inward signification and the thoughts which lay beneath the surface. 
Stasima, therefore, are only introduced in pauses, when the action has 
run a certain course ; the stage is often perfectly clear, or, it any persi 
have remained on it, others come on who were not in connexion with 
them before, in order that they may have time for the change of costume 
and masks. In this manner these songs of the assembled chorus divide 
the tragedy into certain parts, which may be compared to the aol 
modern plays, and from which ~ the Greeks called the part before the 
parodos the prologue, the parts between the parodos and the stasima, 
cpisodia, the part after the last stasimon, exodus. The chorus appears 
in this kind of songs in its appropriate character, and is true to its desti- 
nation, viz., to express the sentiments of a pious, well-ordered mind in 
beautiful and noble forms. Hence this part of ancient tragedy, both in 
matter and form, has the greatest resemblance to the choral lyrics of 
Stesichorus, Pindar, and Simonides. The metrical form consists of 
strophes and antistrophes, which are connected in simple series, without 
any artificial interweaving, as in the choral lyric poetry. Instead, how- 
ever, of the same scheme of strophes and antistrophes being preserved 
through a whole stasimon, it is changed with each pair. Nor are then' 
epodes after every pair of strophes ; but only at the close of the ode' 
This change of metre (which seems also to have been occasionally con- 
nected with an alteration of the musical mode) was used to exprei 
change in the ideas and feelings ; and herein the dramatic lyric | i 
differs essentially from the Pindaric. For whereas the latter rests on 
one fundamental thought and is essentially pervaded b\ one to] 
feeling, the dramatic lyric, containing allusions to past and to coming 
events, and subject to the influence of various leanings to the several 
interests which are opposed on the stage, undergoes changes which often 
materially distinguish the beginning from the end. The rhythmical 
treatment of the several parts, too, is generally less that artificial combi- 
nation of various elements which we find in the works of the al 
mentioned masters of choral lyric poetry, than a working out ol 

* The epodes, which are apparently in the middle of a lone cb< 
vEsch. Agam. 1-10—59. Dindorf.) form the conclusion ot 
instance just adverted to, this consists of nine auapssstic system 
antistrophe, and epode in dactylic measures, and is immediately followed 

stiuwwn, which contains five strophes and antistrophes in trochaic a... 
metres. 



312 HISTORY OF THE 

* 

theme, often with few variations. It is as if we heard the passionate 
song- rushing in a mighty torrent right onwards, while the stream "of 
Pindar's verse winds its mazy way through all the deep and delicate 
intricacies of thought. Without venturing upon the extensive and diffi- 
cult subject of the difference between the rhythmical structure of lyric 
and tragic choral verse, we may remark that, as the tragedians used not 
only the Pindaric measures, but also those of the older Ionic and iEolic 
lyric poets, they observe very different rules in the combination of series 
and verses. To make this clear, it would be necessary to go into all 
the niceties of the theory of the Greek metres. 

§ 12. The pauses which the choral songs produced naturally divided 
tragedy into the parts already mentioned, prologue, episodia, and 
exodus. The number, length, and arrangement of these parts admit 
of an astonishing variety. No numerical rule, like that prescribed by 
Horace,* here confines the natural development of the dramatic plan. 

The number of choral songs was determined by the number of stages 
in the action calculated to call forth reflections on the human affections, 
or the laws of fate which governed the events. These again depend on 
the plot, and on the number of persons necessary to bring it about. 
Sophocles composed some intricate tragedies, with many stages of the 
action and many characters, like the Antigone, which is divided into 
seven acts ; and some simple, in which the action passes through few 
but carefully worked-out stages, like the Philoctetes, which contains 
only one stasimon, and therefore consists of three acts, inclusive of the 
prologue. Long portions of a tragedy may run on without any such 
pause, and form an act. In the Agamemnon of JEschylus, the choral 
song which precedes the predictions of Cassandra is the last stasimon. f 
These prophecies coincide so closely with their fulfilment by the death 
of Agamemnon, and the emotions which they excite are so little tranquil- 
lizing, that there is no opportunity for another stasimon. In Sophocles' 
CEdipus at Colonus, the first general choral song (that is to say, the 
parorlos, in the meaning above given to it) occurs after the scene in 
which Theseus promises to CEdipus shelter and protection in Attica.J 
Hitherto the chorus, vacillating between horror of the accursed and 
pity for his woes ; first fearing much, then hoping greatly from him ; 
is in a state of restless agitation, and can by no means attain to the 
serenity and composure which are necessary to enable it to discern the 
hand of an overruling power. 

§ 13. As to the combination of the episodia or acts, the lyric may 

* Art. Poet. 299. 

Neve minor, neu sit quinto productior actu 

Fabula, quae posci vult et spectata reponi. 
| V. 975—1032. Dindorf. 

J V. 668—719. Dindorf. This ode is called the vdooh; of the CEdipus Coloneus 
in Plutarch An Seni sit ger. Kesp. 3. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIEVT GREECE. 318 

here be far more intimately blended with the dramatic than in 
choral songs of which we have hitherto treated. Wherever the disci 
does not express subjects of the intellect, but feelings, or impulses of lively 
emotion, it becomes lyrical, and finds utterance in long. Such SOI 
which do not stand between the steps or pauses of the action, but enter 
into the action itself (inasmuch as they determine the will of the actors), 
may belong- to the persons of the drama, to the chorus, or to both ; 
but in no case can they be given to a full chorus. The third kind of 
these songs is, in its origin, the most remarkable and important, and 
unquestionably had place in the early, lyrical tragedy. The name 
of this song, common to the actors and the chorus, is commot, which 
properly means planctus, " the wailing for the dead." The wail over 
the dead is therefore the primary form from which this species of 
odes took its rise. The liveliest sympathy with suffering constantly 
remains the main ingredient of ] the commos ; although the en- 
deavour to incite to an action, or to bring a resolution to maturity, may 
be connected with it. The commos often occupies a considerable part 
of a tragedy, especially those of iEschylus : as for instance, in the Per- 
sians* and the Choephorae.t Such a picture of grief and suffering, 
worked out in detail, was an essential part of the early tragedies. In a 
commos, moreover, the long systems of artfully intei woven strophes and 
antistrophes had an appropriate place; since in representation they 
derived a distinctness and effect from the corresponding movements of 
the persons of the drama and of the chorus, which is necessarily lost to 
us in the mere perusal. We find a variety of the commos in scenes 
where the one party, appears in lyrical excitement, while the other 
enounces its thoughts in ordinary language; whence a contrast arises 
which produces deeply affecting scenes even in JSschylus, as in the 
Agamemnon \ and the Seven against Thebes. § But the chorus itself, 
when agitated by violent and conflicting emotions, may carry on a 
lyrical dialogue; and hence arose a peculiar kind of choral poetry, in 
which the various voices are easily recognized by the broken phi 
now repeating, now disputing, what has preceded. Lung lyric dialogues 
of this sort, in which all or many voices of the chorus are distinguished, 
are to be found in yEschylus, and have been noticed by the ancient com- 
mentators. || Succeeding tragedians appear to have employed these choral 

* yEsch. Pers. 907—1076. The extirc exodus is a com 

f ^sch. Choqm. .'tt)6— 478. 

+ Much.. A^am. 1069 — 1177, where the lyrical excitement gradually i 

Cassandra to the chorus. 

§ yEsch. 8ent. cont. Theb. 369 — 70^, through nearly the whole 6] nap. 

Suppl. 346-437. 

II See Schol. /Esch. Eum. 139, and Theb. 94. Instances are furnished I v Hum. 
140—77, 254— 75, 777— 92, 836-46. Theb. 77-181. Buppl. 1019- 
editions frequently denote these single voices by bemicboria ; 1 111 the division of the 
chorus into two equal parts, called m^m in PoIIuk, only occurred in certain 
circumstances, as in /Esch. Theb. 1066. Sonb. Aj. 



314 HISTORY OF THE 

songs exclusively in connexion with commi, and bring forward only a 
few single voices out of the whole chorus * When the chorus enters 
the orchestra, not with a song of many voices, sung in regular rows, 
but in broken ranks, with a song executed in different parts, the choral 
ode consists of two portions ; first, one resembling a commos, which 
accompanies this irregular entrance ; and, secondly, one like a stasimon, 
which the chorus does not execute till it has fallen into its regular 
order. Examples are to be found in the Eumenides of iEschylus and 
the GEdipus Coloneus of Sophocles.t The tragedians have also inter- 
spersed separate smaller choral songs, which the ancients expressly dis- 
tinguish from the stasima,| and which are properly designated by the 
word Hyporchemes ;'§ songs which depict an enthusiastic state of feel- 
ing, and were united with expressive animated dances, of a kind very 
different from the ordinary grave Emmeleia. They are frequently 
used by Sophocles in suitable places, to mark a strong but transitory 
sentiment.H On the other hand, lyrical parts were sometimes allotted 
to the persons of the drama : these were in general called airo GKrjvije,- 
and were either distributed into dialogues or delivered by single per- 
formers. Long airs of this sort, called Monodies, in which one peison, 
generally the protagonist of the drama, abandons himself, without 
restraint, to his emotions, form a principal feature in the tragedies 
of Euripides.^[ As the regular return of fixed musical modes and 
rhythms was not reconcileable with the free utterance and almost uncon- 
trollable current of such passionate outpourings, the antistrophe gra- 
dually disappeared, and the almost infinitely irregular rhythmical struc- 
tures (called a.7ro\e\viJ.iva), in the style of the later dithyrambics, came 
into use. The artificial system of regular forms, to which Greek art 
(and more particularly that of the earlier periods) completely subjected 
the expression of feeling and passion, was here completely swept away 
by the torrent of human affections and desires, and a kind of natural 
freedom was established. 

As to what regards the detail of rhythmical forms, it is sufficient for 

* As ia Soph. (Ed. Col. 117, sqq. Eurip. Ion. 184, sqq. 

f In the Eumenides of iEschylus, the expression %ooov «^wje«v,v. 307, denotes this 
regular disposition of the chorus. 

% Schol. Soph. Trach. 205. Similar odes in Aj. 693. Phil. 391. 827. 

§ Which occurs in Tzetzes, vrtpi raeoyueSk ^^o-tus, in Cramer Anecd. Vol. iii. 
p. 346. 

J] The hyporchemes, however, can scarcely he distinguished from the songs resem- 
bling the commos, since in the latter the entire chorus could hardly have joined in 
the song and dance. In the commatic odes in the Seven against Thebes of 
vEschylus, especially in the first, v. 78 — 181, a dancer named Teltstes (probably as 
leader of the chorus) represented, by means of mimic dances, the scenes of war 
described in the poetry, Athen. 1. p. 22. A. 

•ff Aristophanes says of him, that he uvW^tpiv (rhv rgayuVtav) prnuVw;, K-/i$t<ro<puvrcc 
fuytfa; Cephisophon being his chief actor. Kan. 944. cf. 874. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT Gil] 811 

our purpose to remark, that all the earlier lyrical measures night be 
used for the songs of a single person of the chorus or the stage, as well 
as for the stasima; but that, generally, grave and solemn forms 
applicable only to the songs of the whole chorus; and that lighter 
and more sprightly measures, more suited to the expression of 
emotion and affection, prevailed in the monodies. Hence the 
rhythms of the Doric mode, known from Pindar, are found only in the 
stasima; not in commi and songs imo mqptifrj which afford no pla e 
where this mode could sustain its peculiar character.* On the other 
hand, dochmiaf are admirably fitted, by their rapid movement and 
the apparent antipathy of their elements, to depict the most violent 
excitement of the human mind ; while the great variety of form which 
may be developed from them, lends itself equally to the expression of 
stormy passion and of deep melancholy. Tragedy has no form more 
peculiarly her own, nor more characteristic of her entire being and 
essence. A fixed difference in the metrical forms of the commos and 
the ci7ro aKi]prjg is not perceptible ; we only know from Aristotle, that 
certain modes were peculiar to certain persons of the drama, in conse- 
quence of the peculiar energy or pathos of the character, which ap- 
peared suited to the acting or suffering heroes or heroines of the drama, 
but not to the merely sympathizing chorus. J 

§ 14. All the odes we have hitherto described are properly of a 
musical nature, called mele by the ancients ; they were sung to an accom- 
paniment of instruments, among which sometimes the cithara and lyre, 
sometimes the flute predominated. Other pieces belong to that middle 
kind, between song and^speech, of which we have spoken in treating of 
the rhapsodic recitation of the epos, the elegy, and the iambus. § The 
anapaestic systems, which were chanted sometimes by the chorus, some- 
times by the actors, but properly as an accompaniment to a marching 
movement, either of entrance or exit, escort or salutation, recall the 
Spartan marching songs. || We can hardly imagine them as set to 
regular melodies, nor yet as delivered in common speech. In the early 
tragedy they are allotted, in long systems, as a portion of the parados, 
to the chorus when entering in rank and file. Hexameters were some- 
times recited by the actors in announcing important tidings, or uttering 
serious reflections; where the peculiar dignity and gravity of this 



* Plutarch <le musica 17, indeed, says that even r^ymo) olxrou i. e. commoi. 
originally set in the Doric mode ; but this must refer to the tragedians I 
yEschylus. 

f The main form is o_^_/o_£ ; an antispastic composition, in which the a. 
the iambic and that of the trochaic part coincided. 

+ Aristot. Probl. xix. 43. 

§ Ch. 4. § 3. ch. 10. § 2. 

|| Ch. 14. § 2. 



316 HISTORY OF THE 

majestic measure produced great effect* The usual trochaic verses 
which were allied to dialogue admitted of a higher-toned recitation, 
and especially of a more lively gesticulation, like that Used in dancing ; 
as we have already had occasion to remark. 

§ 15. We now come to the Epeisodia, where the predominant cha- 
racter is not, as in the parts we have hitherto considered, the feeling, 
but the intellect, which, by directing the will, seeks to render external 
things subject to itself, and the opinions of others conformable to its 
own. This was originally the least important element. The variety 
of forms of discourse which tragedy exhibits grew by degrees out 
of mere narration. Here also the chorus forms no contrast to the 
persons of the drama. It is itself, as it were, an actor. The dialogues 
which it holds with the. persons on the stage are, however, necessarily 
carried on, except in a few cases,t not by all its members, but by its 
leader. Rare examples, and those only in iEschylus, are to be found, 
in which the members of the chorus converse among themselves ; as in 
the Agamemnon, where the twelve choreutse deliver their thoughts as 
twelve actors might do ;J others, in which they express their opinions 
individually, in the form of dialogue with a person on the stage. § 
The arrangement of the dialogue is remarkable for that studious 
attention to regularity and symmetry which distinguishes Greek art. 
The opinions and desires which come into conflict are, as it were, 
poised in a balance throughout the whole dialogue ; till at length some 
weightier reason or decision is thrown into one of the scales. Hence 
the frequent scenes so artfully contrived in which verse answers to 
verse, like stroke to stroke ; || and again, others in which two, and 
sometimes more, verses are opposed to each other in the same manner. 
Even whole scenes, consisting of dialogue and lyrical parts, are some- 
times thus symmetrically contrasted, like strophes and antistrophes.*jf 

The metre generally used in this portion of ancient tragedy was, as 
we have already remarked, in early times the Trochaic tetrameter, 
which, in the extant tragedies, is found only in dialogues full of lively 
emotion, and in many does not occur at all. The Persians of iEs- 
chylus, — probably the earliest tragedy we possess, — contains the greatest 
number of trochaic passages. On the other hand, the Iambic trimeter, 
which Archilochus had fashioned into a weapon of scorn and ridicule, 



* See Soph. Phil. 839. Eurip.Phaethon, fragm. e cod. Paris, v. 65. (fragm. 2. ed. 
Dindorf.) 

f As ^Esch. Pers. 1 54. %giuv etvrhv tuvtocs pvQouri T^ocrav^av. 

I ^sch. Agam. 1346 — 71. The three preceding trochaic verses, by which (lie 
consultation is introduced, are spoken by the three first persons of the chorus alone. 

5 ^sch. Agam. 1047—1113. 

I I These single verses were called ffn^e^ia. 

«[[ As in the Electra of Sophocles, v. 1398 — 1421, and v. 1422—41, correspond. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT Cilil.l. 317 

was converted, by 'judicious alterations in the treatment, leaving 
fundamental character unchanged, into the best metrical form for a 
vigorous, animated, and yet serious conversation. But in the woi •!■ 
TEschylus it maintained a greater elevation above ordinary prose than 
in those of his predecessors; not only from the stately sound of the 
reiterated long syllables, but also from the regular accordance of the 
pauses in the sense with the ends of verses, by which the several verse* 
stand out distinct. The later tragedians not only made the construc- 
tion of the verses more varied, light, and voluble, but also divided and 
connected them more frequently according to the endings and begin- 
nings of sentences ; whereby the dialogue acquired an expression of 
freer and more natural movement. 

After having thus investigated and analyzed in detail the forms in 
which the tragic poet had to embody the creations of his genius, we 
should naturally proceed to investigate the essence of a Greek tragedy, 
following the track indicated by the celebrated definition of Aristotle, 
" Tragedy is the imitation of some action that is serious, entire, and of 
a proper magnitude ; effecting through pity and terror the refinement 
of these and similar affections of the soul."* 

But this cannot be done till we have examined more closely the plan 
and contents of separate tragedies of JEschylus and Sophocles. We 
shall therefore best accomplish our aim by proceeding to consider the 
peculiar character of JEschylus as presented to us by his life and 
works. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



§ 1. Life of iEschylus. § 2 Number of his tragedies, and their distribution into 
trilogies. § 3. Outline of his tragedies ; the Persians. § 4. The Phineus ami 

the Glaucus Pontius. § 5. The ^Etnaean women. § f>. The Seven against 
Thebes. § 7. The Eleusinians. § 8. The Suppliants ; the Egyptians. £ '•». The 
Prometheus bound. § 10. The Prometheus unbound. § 11. The Agamemnon. 
§ 12. The Choiiphora?. § 13. The Eumenides, and the Proteus. 6 14. General 
characteristics of the poetry of yEschylus. § 15. His latter years and death* 

§ 1. zEschylus, the son of Euphorion, an Athenian, from the hamlet of 
Eleusis, was, according to the most authentic record, bom in Oiymp. 
63. 4. b.c. 525. t He was therefore thirty-five years old at the time of 
the battle of Marathon, and forty-five years old at the time of the 
battle of Salamis. Accordingly, he was among the Greeks who wen- 
contemporary, in the fullest sense of the word, with these gnat events, 

* Aristot. Poet. 6. {tifwri; *£u%iu; trfaulu'ius xa< nXtiu;, piyites lg«»r«f . 

3/ Ik'iOV KO.)<p'o(hoV TigXIVOUffOC, T/JV TUV 7010UTUV Xd^r^drODI KuSd^ffiV. 

f The celebrated chronological inscription of the island of Pan* st.iWs the 
of his death and his age, whence the yeur of his birth can be determined. 



31 S HISTORY OP THE 

and who had felt them with all the emotions of a patriotic spirit. His 
epitaph speaks only of his fame in the battle of Marathon, not of his 
glories in poetic contests.* iEschylus belonged completely to the race 
of the warriors of Marathon, in the sense which this appellation bore in 
the time of Aristophanes ; those patriotic and heroic Athenians, of the 
ancient stamp, from whose manly and honourable character sprang all 
the glory and greatness which were so rapidly developed in Athens 
after the Persian war. 

/Eschylus, like almost all the great masters of poetry in ancient 
Greece, was a poet by profession ; he had chosen the exercise of the 
tragic art as the business of his life. This exercise of art was 
combined with the training of choruses for religious solemnities. The 
tragic, like the comic, poets were essentially chorus teachers. When 
iEschylus desired to represent a tragic poem, he was obliged to repair, 
at the proper time, to the Archon, who presided over the festivals of 
Bacchus,t and obtain a chorus from him. If this public functionary 
had the requisite confidence in the poet, he granted him the chorus ; 
that is to say, he assigned him one of the choruses which were raised, 
maintained, and fitted out by the wealthy and ambitious citizens, as 
choregi, in the name of the tribes or Phylae of the people. The prin- 
cipal business of iEschylus then was to practise this chorus in all the 
dances and songs which were to be performed in his tragedy ; and it 
is stated that iEschylus employed no assistant for this purpose, but 
arranged and conducted the whole himself. 

Thus far the tragic was upon the same footing as the lyric, especially 
the dithyrambic, poet, since the latter received his dithyrambic chorus 
in the same manner, and was likewise required to instruct it. The 
tragic poet, however, also required actors, who were paid, not by the 
choregus, but by the state, and who were assigned by lot to the poet, in 
case he was not already provided. For some poets had actors, who 
were attached to them, and who were peculiarly practised in their 
pieces ; thus Cleandrus and Myniscus acted for zEschylus. The prac- 
tising or rehearsal of the piece was always considered the most im- 
portant, because the public and official part of the business. Whoever 
thus brought out upon the stage a piece which had not been performed 
before, obtained the rewards offered by the state for it, or the prize, if 
the play was successful. The poet, who merely composed it in the 



* Cj'negeirus, the enthusiastic fighter of Marathon, is called the brother of 
Eschylus: it is certain that his father was named Euphorion, Herod. VI. 114. 
with Valckenaer's note. On the other hand, Ameinias, who began the battle of 
SalamiSj cannot well have been a brother of y£schylus, since he belonged to the 
deme of Pallene, while yEschylus belonged to the deme of Eleusis. 

t This was for the great Dionysia, the first Archon, o ci.>%uv m»¥ %*%nv\ for 
the Lenea, the second, the basileus. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT dREECE. 

solitude of his study, could lay no claim to the rewards dl 
public exhibition. 

§2. These statements show that th. 
the sole occupation of a man's life, and (from the great fertility of the 
ancient poets) absorbed every faculty of his mind. There were 
extant in antiquity seventy dramas of yEschylus ; wad among the* 
satyric dramas do not appear to be included.* All these plays fall in 
the period between Olymp. 70. 1. b. c. 500, and Olymp. 81. I. 
456. In the former of these years, /LCschylus, then in his twenty-fifth 
year, first strove with Pratinas for the prize of tragedy; (upon which 
occasion the ancient scaffolding- is said to have given way,) and in the 
latter year the poet died in Sicily. Accordingly he produced fervent] 
tragedies in a period of forty-four years. That the excellence of I 
works was generally recognized is proved by the fact of .'Ksehvlus 
having obtained the prize for tragedy thirteen times. t For, since at 
every contest he produced three tragedies, it follows that more than 
half his works were preferred to those of his competitors, among whom 
there were such eminent poets as Phrynichus, Chucrilus, Pratinas, and 
Sophocles; I the latter of whom had, at his first representation, in 
Olymp. 77. 4. B.C. 493, obtained the prize from .Eschylns. 

It has been already stated that JEschylus composed three tragedies 
for every tragic contest in which he appeared as a competitor ; and to 
these, as was also remarked, a satyric drama was annexed. In making 
this combination, iEschylus followed a custom which had probablj 
grown up before his time, and which was retained as long as tragedy 
continued to flourish in Athens. But TEschylns differed from his 
successors in this, that his three tragedies formed a whole, connects 1 
in subject and plan; while Sophocles began to oppose three separate 
tragedies to an equal number produced by his rivals. § We should bt 
at a loss to understand by what means the three pieces composing the 
trilogy were formed into a connected series, without depriving I 
piece of its individual character, if we were not so fortunate as to 

* In the much contested passage at the end of the Vita /Bachftiy should prol 
he written : iTor/ios fyccfcc&TK ifiBoftixovTU, y.cc) ssn <rovrei; ffctrugucdi' u/jl$> 
1 He composed 70 dramas, and also satyric dramas ; five are ascribed to him OD 
doubtful authority.' The extant titles of dramas of /Kschj ins are. including the 
satyric dramas, ahout 38. 

-\ According to the life. First in Olymp. 73, 4. According to the Parian man 
+ The calculation is indeed rendered Somewhat uncertain hy the fact tl, 
rion, the son of TKschylus, gained the prize four times after his father's death, with 
dramas which had been bequeathed to him hy his father, and which had not 
before represented : Suidas in E*pq<»* Accordingly, VI of the ' 

bably fall after Olymp. M. 1. The foul prizes OUght nut. however, to l. 

from the 13 gained by jEschylua, aince Euphorion was publicly proclain 

although it was well known that the tragedies were composed b] 

§ This is the meaning of the words, fyx/ta *•(»{ 3(«/*« *yw!frrtm t «AA« ftn 
rgiXoyiKv. Suidas in 'ZoQoxM;. 



320 HISTORY OF THE 

possess a trilogy of yEschylus, in his Agamemnon, Choephorse, and 
Eumenides. The best illustration of the nature of a trilogy will there- 
fore be a short analysis of these dramas, and accordingly we proceed to 
give an account of his extant works. 

§ 3. Of the early part of the career of iEschylus we do not possess a 
single work. All his extant dramas are of a later date than the battle 
of Salamis. Probably his early works contained little to attract the 
taste of the later Greeks. 

The earliest of the extant works of iEschylus is probably the Per- 
sians, which was performed in Olymp. 76. 4. B.C. 472 ; a piece unique 
in its kind, which appears, at a first glance, more like a lament over 
the misfortunes of the Persians than a tragic drama. But we are led 
to modify this opinion, on considering the connexion of the parts of the 
trilogy, which is apparent in the drama itself. 

We will give an outline of the plan of the Persians of iEschylus. 
The chorus (consisting of the most distinguished men of the Persian 
empire, into whose hands Xerxes, at his departure, had committed the 
government of the country) . proclaim in their opening song the 
numbers and power of the Persian army; but, at the same time, 
express a fear of its destruction ; for " what mortal man may elude the 
insidious deceit of the gods?" The first stasirnon, which immediately 
follows the opening choral song, describes, in a more agitated manner, 
the grief of the country in case the army should not return. The 
chorus is preparing for a deliberation, when Atossa appears, the mother 
of Xerxes, and widow of Darius; she relates an ominous dream which 
has filled her with anxious forebodings. The chorus advise her to 
implore the gods to avert the impending evil, and especially to pro- 
pitiate the spirit of Darius by libations, and to pray for blessing and 
protection. To her questions concerning Athens and Greece they 
answer with characteristic descriptions of the distinctions of the dif- 
ferent nations ; when a messenger from Greece arrives, and, after the 
first announcements of mishap and laments of the chorus, he pre- 
sents a magnificent picture of the battle of Salamis, with its terrific 
consequences for the Persian army. Atossa resolves, though every- 
thing is lost, to follow the advice of .the chorus, in case any benefit 
may be obtained from it. In the second stasimon the chorus 
dwell upon the desolation of Asia, to which is added a fear that 
.the subject nations will no longer endure their servitude. In the 
second episodion the libations for the dead change into an evoca- 
tion of the spirit of Darius. The chorus, during the libations of 
Atossa, call upon Darius, in songs resembling a commos, full of 
warmth and feeling, as the wi.se and happy ruler, the good father of 
his people, who now alone can help them, to appear on the summit 
of the tomb. Darius appears, and learns from Atossa (for fear and 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 321 

respect tie the tongue of the chorus) the destruction of the king- 
dom. He immediately recognizes in the event the " too speedy 
fulfilment of oracles," which might have been long delayed, had not 
the arrogance of Xerxes hastened their accomplishment. " But when 
any man, of his own accord, hurries on to his ruin, the deity seconds 
his efforts." He regards the crossing of the Hellespont as an enter- 
prise contrary to the will of the gods, and as the main cause of their 
wrath; and, on the authority of oracles known to him, which are now 
to be completely fulfilled, especially on account of the violation of the 
Greek temples, he announces that the remains of the invading Persian 
army will be destroyed at the battle of Plataea. The annihilation of 
its power in Europe is a warning given by Zeus to the Persians, that 
they should be satisfied with their possessions in Asia. The third 
stasimon, which concludes this act, describes the power which Darius 
had gained without himself invading Greece or crossing the Halys; 
contrasted with the misfortunes sent by the gods upon Persia for 
infringing these principles. In the third act Xerxes himself appears as 
a fugitive, in torn and ragged kingly garments, and the whole concludes 
with a long commos, or orchestic and musical representation of the 
despair of Xerxes, in which the chorus takes a part. 

§ 4. It appears from this outline, that the evocation and appearance 
of Darius, and not the description of the victory, form the main subject 
of this drama. The arrogance and folly of Xerxes have brought about 
the accomplishment of the ancient oracles, and caused the fate which 
was hanging over Asia and Greece to be fulfilled in the destruction of 
the Persian power. The oracles alluded to in general terms by Darius 
are known to us from Herodotus. They were predictions attributed 
to Bacis, Musseus, and others, and they had been made known, though 
in a garbled form, by Onomacritus, the companion of the Pisistratids 
at the Persian court.* They contained allusions to the bridging of 
the Hellespont, the destruction of the Grecian temples, and the invasion 
of Greece by a barbarian army. They referred, indeed, in part, to 
mythical events, but they were then (as has been often the case with 
other predictions) applied to the events of the time.f Now we know 
from a didascalia that the Persians was, at its representation, preceded 
by a piece entitled the Pkineus. It is sufficient to observe that Phineus, 
according to the mythologists, received the Argonauts on their voyage 
to Colchis, and, at the same time, foretold to them the adventures which 
were yet to befal them. 

We have shown in a former chapter^ that the notion of an ancient 
conflict between Asia and Europe, leading, by successive stages, to 

* See ch. XVI. $ 5. t Herod, VI. G. IX. 42, 43. 

j ch. xix. 5 -l. 

Y 



322 HISTORY OF THE 

events constantly increasing in magnitude, was one of the prevailing- 
ideas of that time. It is probable that iEsehylus took this idea as the 
basis of the prophecies of Phineus, and that he represented the expe- 
dition of the Argonauts as a type of the greater conflicts between Asia 
and Europe which succeeded it. We will not follow out the mythical 
combinations which the poet might have employed, inasmuch as what 
we have said is sufficient to explain the connexion and subject of the 
entire trilogy. 

The same purpose is likewise perceptible in the third piece, the 
Glaucus- Pontius* The extant fragments show that this marine 
demigod (of whose wanderings and appearances on various coasts 
strange tales were told in Greece) described in this tragedy a voyage 
which he had made from Anthedon through the Eubcean and iEgean 
seas to Italy and Sicily. In this narrative a prominent place was filled 
by Himera, the city in which the power of the Sicilian Greeks had 
crushed the attempts of the Carthaginian invaders, at the time of the 
battle of Salamis. In this manner iEschylus had an opportunity of 
bringing this event (which was considered as the second great exploit 
by which Greece was saved from the yoke of the barbarians) into close 
connexion with the battle of Plataea ; since the scene of the drama was 
Anthedon in Bceotia, where Glaucus was supposed to have lived as a 
fisherman. It may likewise be conjectured that in the tragedy of 
Phineus, the Phoenicians, as well as the Persians, may have been 
introduced into the predictions respecting the conflicts between Asia 
and Greece. f 

§ 5. Accordingly, in this trilogy, iEschylus shows himself a friend 
of the Sicilian Greeks, as well as of his countrymen at Athens. His 
connexion with the princes and republics of Sicily must be here con- 
sidered, since it exercised some influence upon his poetry. The later 
grammarians (who have filled the history of literature with numerous 
stories founded upon mere conjecture) have assigned the most various 

* The argument of the Persians mentions the YXauxo; Uotvuvs. Bat as the two 
plays of ^Rschylus, the Glaucus Pontius and Glaucus Potnieus are confounded in 
other passages, we may safely adopt the conjecture of Welcker, that the Glaucus 
Pontius is the play meant in the argument just cited. 

-J- [The explanation given in § 4 of the trilogy referred to is exceedingly doubtful. 
The main subject of the Persians is evidently the discomfiture of the invading Per- 
sians by the Greeks. The evocation of Darius is merely a device to introduce the 
battle of Plataea, which consummated their defeat, as well as the battle of Salamis. 
The notion that the Phineus, Persians, and Glaucus formed a trilogy in which the 
subjects of the three pieces were connected, is highly improbable ; and the con- 
jecture that the third piece was the Glaucus Pontius, and not the Potnieus, as the 
didascalia tells us, is gratuitous. It cannot be doubted that many of the plays of 
-^schylus were written in connected trilogies ; but it is impossible to prove that they 
all were, and that the introduction of disconnected pieces was an innovation of 
Sophocles, as is asserted below, chap. XXIV. § 4. p. 341. The very trilogy in ques- 
tion will be, to many persons, a sufficient proof of the contrary'. — Editor/} 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GUEECE. 

motives for the residence of /Eschylus in Sicily, which was an i 
tained fact, by enumerating- all the circumstances in his life at Athens 
which could have induced him to become a voluntary exile. Some 
accounts of a different character have, however, been preserved, on 
which we may safely rely * ,Eschylus was in Sicily with Iliero, just 
after this ruler of Syracuse had built the town of .Etna, at the foot of 
the mountain, and in the place of the ancient Catana. At this time 
he composed his tragedy of the " Women of /Etna," in which he 
announced the prosperity of the new colony. The subject of it, as its 
name, borrowed from the chorus, betokens, must have been taken 
from the events of the day. At the same time he reproduced the 
Persians at the court of Hiero; but whether with alterations, or as 
it had been acted at Athens, was a matter of controversy among- the 
ancient scholars. Hence it appears that jEschylus, soon after the 
appearance of the Persians, went to Sicily, about the year 471 b. c, 
four years after the time when iEtna was founded, and when it was 
not quite finished. Hiero died four years afterwards, in 467 b. c. 
(Olymp. 78. 2.) ; but iEschylus must have left Sicily before this event, 
as in the beginning of the year 468 b. c. (Olymp. 77. 4.) we find him 
again at Athens, and engaged in a poetical contest with Sophocles. 
According to the ancients, his acquaintance with the Pythagorean 
philosophy and his use of certain rare Doric expressions then used in 
Sicily, may be traced to his residence in that island. 

§ 6. The tragedy of the Seven against Thebes falls in the next lime. 
It is known to have been acted after the Persians, and before the death 
of Aristides (which occurred about 462 b. c.)t In this drama the 
ancients peculiarly admired the warlike spirit exhibited by the poet; 
and, in fact, a fire burns throughout it which could only have been 
kindled in a brave and heroic breast. Eteocles appears as a wise 
and resolute general and hero, as well in the manner in which he 
recommends tranquillity to the women of the chorus, as in the answers 
which he makes to the tidings of the messengers, and in his opposing 
to each of the seven haughty leaders of the hostile army (who come like 
giants to storm the walls of Thebes) a brave Theban hero; until at 
length Polynices, his own brother, is named, when he declares his reso- 
lution to go out himself to meet him. The determination of Polynices 
to reserve himself for the combat with his brother creates an anxious 
interest in an attentive hearer; and his announcement of this resolu- 
tion is the pivot upon which the whole piece turns. Nothing can be 
more striking than the gloomy resoluteness with which Bteoela recog- 

* Eratosth. ap. Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 1055 (10G0), and the fita .Kmlujli, with 
the additam, e cod. Guelferbyiano. 

f See Clinton F. H. ad ann. 472. Aristophanes Ran. 10126, appears to con* 
the Persians as posterior to the Seven against Thebes. 

1 -2 



324 HISTORY OF THE 

nizes the operation of the curse pronounced by (Edipus against his two 
sons, and yet proceeds to its fulfilment. The stasimon of the chorus 
which follows plainly recognizes the wrath and curse of (Edipus as the 
cause of all the calamities which threaten the Thebans. This dark side 
of the destiny of Thebes had not been revealed in the previous part of 
the drama, although Eteocles had once before declared his fear of the 
woes which this curse might bring upon Thebes (v. 70). Soon after- 
wards arrives the account of the preservation of the city, but with the 
reciprocal slaughter of the brothers. The two sisters, Antigone and 
Ismene, now appear upon the stage; and, with the chorus, sing a 
lament for the dead ; which is very striking from the blunt ingenuity 
and melancholy wit with which iEschylus has contrived to paint in the 
strongest colours the calamities and perversities of human life.* At 
the conclusion, the two sisters separate from the chorus ; inasmuch as 
Antigone declares her intention to bury her brother Polynices, against 
the command of the senate of Thebes, which had just been proclaimed. 

§ 7. This concluding scene therefore points as distinctly as the end 
of the Choephorce to the subject of a new piece, which was doubtless 
" the Eleusinians." This drama appears to have turned upon the 
burial of the Argive heroes slain before the gates of Thebes ; which 
burial was carried into execution by Theseus with the Athenians, against 
the will of the Thebans, and in the territory of Eleusis. It is manifest 
that the fate of Antigone (who, following her own impulse, had buried 
her brother, and either suffered or was to suffer death in consequence) 
was closely connected with this subject. But neither the plan nor the 
prevailing ideas of this last drama of the trilogy can be gathered from 
the few fragments of it which remain. 

The connexion of the Seven against Thebes with a preceding piece is 
less evident, in the same way that the Choephorcs points forward far 
more distinctly to the Eumenides than it points backward to the Aga- 
memnon. But since we perceive in the extant trilogy that iEschylus 
was accustomed to develope completely all the essential parts of a 
mythological series, it cannot be doubted that the Seven against Thebes 
was preceded by some drama with which it was connected. The subject 
of this drama should not, however, be sought, with some critics, in the 
fables respecting the expedition of the Argive heroes ; for they do not 
form the centre about which this tragic composition revolves, but are 
a vast foreign power breaking in upon the destinies of Thebes. It should 
rather be sought in the earlier fortunes of the royal family of Thebes. 
If we consider the great effect produced in " the Seven against Thebes'' 

* As when the chorus says. "Their hate is ended : their lives have flowed together 
on the gory earth ; now in truth are they blood-relations''' (o/u,cttp.oi) , v. 938-40, or where 
it is said, that the evil genius of the race has placed the trophies of destruction at 
the gate where they fell, and never rested till it had overcome both. V. 957-60. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT ' 

by the curse of CEdipus, we must conclude that thi 

been treated as the principal subject of the precedii)| 

fcept in mind by the spectators during the Bpeeches n I t » 

spread over the whole tliat feelingr of anxious foreboding which i 

of the most striking- effects of tragedy.* It may, th 

inferred that it was the CEdipus, one of the lost plays of with 

which this trilogy commenced. 

The poetry of JEsehylus furnishes distinct and certain evidence of his 
disposition and opinions, particularly with respect to those public oc- 
currences which at that time occupied the mind of every patriotic C, 
and in speaking* of the Seven against Thebes, out attention has 
called to his political principles, which appear still more clearly in the 
Orestean trilogy. yEschylus was one of those Athenians who strove io 
moderate the restless struggles of their countrymen alter democracy and 
dominion over other Greeks; and who sought to maintain the. ancient 
severe principles of law and morality, tog-ether with the institutions by 
which these were supported. The just, wise, and moderate Aristides 
was the statesman approved of by ./Eschylus, and not Themistocles, who 
pursued the distant objects of his ambition, through straight and 
crooked paths, with equal energy. The admiration of yEschylus for 
Aristides is clearly seen in his description of the battle of Salami's. f In 
the Seven ag-ainst Thebes, the description of the upright Amphiaraus, 
who wished, not to seem, but to be, the best; the wise general, from 
whose mind, as from the deep furrows of a well-ploughed field, noble 
counsels proceed; was universally applied by the Athenian people to 
Aristides, and was doubtless intended by yEschylus for him. Then the 
complaint of Eteocles, that this just and temperate man, associated with 
impetuous companions, must share their ruin, expresses the disapproba- 
tion felt by TEschylus of the dispositions of other leaders of the Greeks 
and Athenians; among 1 the rest, of Themistocles, who at that time had 
probably g-one into exile on account of the part he had taken in the 
treasonable designs of Pausanias. 

§ 8. We come next to the trilogy which maybe called the Danais, 
and of which only the middle piece is preserved in the Suppliants. An 
historical and political spirit pervades this trilogy. The extant piece 
turns upon the reception in Pelasgic Argos of Danaus and his daughters 
who had fled from Egypt in order to escape the violence of their 
suitors, the sons of /Egypt us. They sit as suppliants near s group of 

* The account of this curse which w;is given by dEechylne Menu to h.ue I 
in several respects peculiar. GBdipui not only announced that the broth 
not divide their heritage in amity (according to the Thebaid in Athen. XI. p. 
hut he also declared that a stranger fn m Scvthia 

make the partition u an arbitratoi (Jbmnir, according to the language of the 
Attic law). If CEdipus had not used these worde, the enorue, 1, and 

the messenger, v. b 17, could v. the MOM idea, in I aino terms. 

f Comp. vv. 447 — 171, with Ilerodot. \hi. ( J3. 



326 HISTORY OF THE 

altars {Koipo^iojuia), In front of the city of Arg-os; and the king- of the 
Argives (who is fearful of involving- his kingdom in distress and danger) 
is induced, after many prayers and entreaties, to convene an assembly 
of the people, in order to deliberate concerning their reception. The 
assembly, partly from respect for the rights of suppliants, and partly 
from compassion for the persecuted daughters of Danaus, decrees to re- 
ceive them. The opportunity soon presents itself of fulfilling the promise 
of protection and security : for the sons of iEgyptus land upon the 
coast, and (during the absence of Danaus, who is gone to procure as- 
sistance) the Egyptian herald attempts to carry off the deserted maidens, 
as being the rightful property of his masters. Upon this, the king of 
the Pelasgians appears in order to protect them, and dismisses the 
herald, notwithstanding his threats of war. Nevertheless, the danger is 
averted only for the moment ; and the play concludes with prayers to 
the gods that these forced marriages may be prevented, with which are 
intermingled doubts concerning the fate determined by the gods. 

The want of dramatic interest in this drama partly proceeds from its 
being the middle piece of a trilogy. The third piece, the Danaides, 
doubtless contained the decision of the contest by the death of the 
suitors, with the exception of Lynceus ; while a preceding drama, the 
Egyptians, must have explained the cause and origin of the contest in 
Egypt. There are other instances, in the middle pieces of the trilogies of 
iEschylus, of the action standing nearly still, the attention being made 
to dwell upon the sufferings caused by the elements which have been 
set in motion. The idea of the timid, afflicted virgins flying from their 
suitors' violence like doves before the vulture (which is worked out, in 
lyric strains, with great warmth and intensity of feeling) is evidently 
the main subject of the drama ; it seems, indeed, that the preservation 
of the play has been due to the beauty of these choral odes. Yet the 
reception of the Danaides must have been a much more appropriate and 
important subject for a tragedy, according to the ideas of iEschylus, 
than according to those of Sophocles and Euripides. What this action 
wants in moral significance was compensated, in his opinion, by its 
historical interest. iEschylus belongs to a period when the national 
legends of Greece were considered, not as mere amusing fictions, but as 
evidences of the divine power which ruled over Greece. An event like 
the reception of the Danaides in Argos, on which depended the origin 
of the families of the Perseids and Heracleids, appeared to him as a 
great work of the counsels of Zeus ; and to record the operation of 
these on human affairs seemed to him the highest calling of the tragic 
poet. Contrary to the custom of epic and tragic poets, he ascribes the 
greatest merit of the act to the Argive people, not to their king, and 
accordingly, the chorus, in a beautiful song (v. 625 — 709), invokes 
blessings upon them, the cause of which is evidently to be found in the 
relations which then subsisted between Athens and Argos. iEschylus, 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT Gill 

however, never makes forced allusions to contemporai | 
naturally out of his mode of considering history, whi 

that of Pindar. According to this view, it whs i„ the LbicaJ 

ages that the Greek states received the lot of theil future destiniei and 
were fixed in that position which they occupied in later i mi i 

passages in the Suppliants which so plainly refer to the establish) 
of a well regulated popular government in Argos and to treaties with 
foreign states by which war might be avoided,* make it evident that 
this piece was produced about the time when the alliance bet 
Athens and Argos was already in operation, perhaps towards the end 
of Ol. 79, b. c. 46l.t Also, the threats of a war with Egypt, which are 
implied in the plot of this tragedy, furnish the poet with a favourable 
opportunity for introducing some striking and impressive sayings, which 
necessarily held out great encouragement to the Athenians for the war 
with Egypt, which began Olymp. 79. 3. b. c. 462; as when we find it 
said that " The fruit of the papyrus" (which w;is the common food of 
the Egyptians) " conquers not the wheat-stalk. "J 

§ 9. The Prometheus was in all probability one of the last efforts of 
the genius of TEschylus, for the third actor is to a certain extent em- 
ployed in it (chap. XXII. § 7). It is, beyond all question, one of his 
greatest works. Historical allusions are not to be expected in this 
play, as the subject does not comprise the events of any particular state 
or family, but refers to the condition and relations of the whole human 
race. Prometheus, as we had occasion to remark when speaking of 
Hesiod (chap. VIII. § 3, p. 91 note), represents the provident, aspiring 
understanding of man, which ardently seeks to improve in all ways the 
condition of our being. He was represented as a Titan, because the 
Greeks, who considered the gods of Olympus as rulers only, not as 
creators, of the human race, laid the foundation and beginning of man 
in the time which preceded the kingdom of the Olympian gods. Thus, 
according to the conception of /Eschylus, he is the friend and mediator 
of man — " the daemon most friendly to mankind," in that period of the 
world when the kingdom of Zeus began. He does not, how< 
spiritualize him into a mere allegory of foresight and prudence, tor in 
^Eschylus a real, lively faith in the existence of mythical beings is har- 
moniously combined with a consideration of their significance. By 
teaching men the use of fire, Prometheus has made iheni acquainted 
with all the arts which render human life more endurable; in gen< 
he has made them wiser and happier in even re ecisil] b) 

taking from them the fear of death. Hut in this he does not respect 

* Thusthe chorus says, v. 698—7(1.5 1 •■ May the people, who nil BftJa- 

tain their rights — may they give foreigners their due, DOfora they . ^ into 

the hands ot Ares." 

f This alliance is more distinctly mentioned in the Kumeuido. iq.) f 

which was brought out a few \eais alter. 

+ V. 7G1. Comp. v. Dot. 



328 HISTORY OF THE 

the limits which, according to the view of the ancients, the gods, who 
are alone immortal, have prescribed to the human race ; he seeks to ac- 
quire for mortals perfections which the gods had reserved for themselves 
alone; for a mind which is always striving after advancement, and 
using all means to obtain it, cannot easily, from its very constitution, 
confine itself within the narrow limits prescribed to it by custom and 
law. These efforts of Prometheus, which we also learn occasionally 
from the play that has come down to us, were in all probability depicted 
with much greater perfection, and in connexion with his stealing the 
fire, in the first portion of the trilogy, which was called Prometheus the 
Fire-bringer (flpoinrjdevg Trvpc&opoc).* 

The extant play, the Prometheus Bound (ITpo/z^OfOg cW/zw-tjc), begins 
at once with the fastening of the gigantic Titan to the rocks of Scythia, 
and the fettered prisoner is the centre of all the action of the piece. The 
daughters of Oceanus, who constitute the chorus of the tragedy, come 
to comfort and calm him ; he is then visited by the aged Oceanus him- 
self, and afterwards by Hermes, who endeavour, the one by mild argu- 
ments, the other by insults and threats, to move him to compliance and 
submission. Meanwhile Prometheus continues to defy the superior 
power of Zeus, and stoutly declares that, unless his base fetters are re- 
moved, he will not give out an oracle that he has learned from his 
mother Themis, respecting the marriage, by means of which Zeus was 
destined to lose his sovereign power. He would rather that Zeus 
should bury his body in the rocks amid thunder and lightning. With 
this the drama concludes, in order to allow him to come forth again 
and suffer new torments. This grand and sublime defiance of Prome- 
theus, by which the free will of man is perfectly maintained under over- 
whelming difficulties from without, is generally considered the great 
design of the poem; and in reading the remaining play of the trilogy, 
there is no doubt on which side our sympathies should be enlisted : for 
Prometheus appears as the just and suffering martyr; Zeus as the 
mighty tyrant, jealous of his power. Nevertheless, if we view the sub- 
ject from the higher ground of the old poetic associations, we cannot 
rest content with such a solution as this. Tragedy could not, in con- 
formity with those associations, consist entirely of the opposition and 
conflict between the free will of an individual and omnipotent fate ; it 
must appease contending powers and assign to each of them its proper 
place. Contentions may rise higher and higher, the opposition may be 
stretched to the utmost, yet the divine guidance which presides over the 
whole finds means to restore order and harmony, and allots to each 
conflicting power its own peculiar right. 

* This Prometheus Pyrphoros must, as Welcker has shown, be distinguished from 
the Prometheus Pyrkatus, "the fire-kindler," asatyric drama which was appended to 
the trilogy of the Persa?, and probably had reference to the festal customs of the 
Promethea in the Cerameicus, which comprised a torch-race. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 

The contest, with all its attendant miseries, appears even 1 eneftcial in 
its results. This is the course of the tragedies of ASschylus, and in 
of Greek tragedy in general, so far as it remains true to its object. 
The tragedies of iEschylus uniformly require faith in a divine power, 
which, with steady eye and firm hand, guides the course of events to the 
best issue, though the paths through which it leads may be dark and 
difficult, and fraught with distress and suffering. The poetrj i I 
chylus is full of profound and enthusiastic glorifications of Zeus as this 
power. How then could Zeus be depicted in this drama as a tyrant, 
how could the governor of the world be represented as arbitrary and 
unjust? It is true that the Greek divinities are always described as 
beings who are not what they were, (above p. 88,) and hence il is diffi- 
cult to separate from them the ideas of strife and contention. This also 
accounts for the severity with which Zeus, at the time described by 
iEschylus, proceeds against every attempt to limit and circumscribe his 
newly established sovereignty. But /Eschylus, in his own mind, must 
have felt how this severity, a necessary accompaniment of the transition 
from the Titanian period to the government of the gods of Olympus, was 
to be reconciled with the mild wisdom which he makes an attribute of 
Zeus in the subsequent ages of the world. Consequently the deviation 
from right, the anapria in the tragic action, which, according to Ari- 
stotle, should not be considered as depravity, but as the error of a noble 
nature,* would all lie on the side of Prometheus; and even the poet 
has clearly shown this in the piece itself, when he makes the chorus of 
Oceanides, who are friendly to Prometheus, and even to the sacrific 
themselves, perpetually recur to the same thoughts. " Those only are 
wise who humbly reverence Adrastea," (the inexorable goddess of 
Fate).t 

§ 10. In these remarks upon the Prometheus Bound we have passed 
over one act of the play, which, however, is of the highest importance 
for an understanding of the whole trilogy, namely, the appearance of 
Io, who, having won the love of Zeus, has brought, upon herself the 
hatred of Hera. Persecuted by horrid phantoms, she conies in her wan- 
derings to Prometheus, and learns from him the further miseries, all of 
which she has still to endure. The misfortunes of Io very much re- 
semble those of Prometheus, since Io also might be considered as a 
victim to the selfish severity of Zeus, and she is so considered by Pro- 
metheus. At the same time, however, as Prometheus dors not con- 
ceal from Io that the thirteenth in descent from tier is to release him 
from all his sufferings ; the love of Zeus for her appears in a higher 
light, and we obtain for the fate of Prometheus also that -oil ofassuag- 

* That is to say, so far as it is the upccprlx of the protagouil 

Agamemnon, Anti^om*. (EdipuSj and so forth; lor the a.puerlxi ol th< ' 
are of a totally different kind. 

•j- V. 936. 0/ tf£0<rKvrovvTti rhv ' 'aJjwtiwk vo^ei 



330 HISTORY OP THE 

ing' tranquillity, which it was always the aim of the ancients to preserve, 
even in their most impassioned scenes. But as Hermes announces 
that Zeus will never succeed in overcoming' the rebellious Titans 
till an immortal shall freely lay down his life for him, the issue remains 
dark and doubtful. 

The Prometheus Unbound (Upo/inOevg Xvofxevog'), the loss of which we 
lament more almost than that of any other tragedy, although many 
considerable fragments of it remain, began at a totally different period 
of the world. Prometheus, however, still remains bound to the rock in 
Scythia, and, as Hermes had prophetically threatened, he is daily torn 
by the eagle of Zeus. The chorus, instead of the Oceanides, consists of 
Titans escaped from durance in Tartarus. .ZEschylus, therefore, like 
Pindar,* adopts the idea, originating with the Orphic poets, that Zeus, after 
he had firmly fixed the government of the world, proclaimed a general 
amnesty, and restored peace among the vanquished powers of heaven. 
Meanwhile mankind had arrived at a much higher degree of dignity 
than even Prometheus had designed for them, by means of the hero-race, 
and man became, as it were, ennobled through heroes sprung from the 
Olympic gods. Hercules, the son of Zeus by a distant descendant 
of Io, was the greatest benefactor and friend of man among heroes, as 
Prometheus was among Titans. He now appears, and, after hearing 
from Prometheus the benefits he has conferred upon man, and receiv- 
ing a proof of his good will in the way of prediction and advice with 
regard to his own future adventures, releases the sufferer from the tor- 
ments of the eagle, and from his chains. He does this of his own free 
will, but manifestly by the permission of Zeus. Zeus has already fixed 
upon the immortal who is ready to resign his immortaliiy. Cheiron is, 
without Hercules' intending it, wounded by one of the poisoned arrows 
of the hero, and, in order to escape endless torments, is willing to de- 
scend into the lower world. We must suppose that, at the end of the 
piece, the power and majesty of Zeus and the profound wisdom of his 
decrees are so gloriously manifested, that the pride of Prometheus is 
entirely broken. + Prometheus now brings a wreath of Agnus Castus, 
(Xvyoc,) and probably a ring also, made from the iron of his fetters, 
mysterious symbols of the dependence and subjection of the human 
race ; and he now willingly proclaims his mother's ancient prophecy, 
that a son more powerful than the father who begot him should be 
born of the sea-goddess Thetis ; whereupon Zeus resolves to marry the 
goddess to the mortal Peleus. 

It is scarcely possible to conceive a more perfect kaiharsis of a tra- 
gedy, according to the requisitions of Aristotle. 

The passions of fear, pity, hatred, love, anger, and admiration, as 

* Pindar P.jlh. iv. 291. Comp. above chap. XVI. § 1, 

f Even after his liberation from fetters Prometheus had called Hercules " the 
most dear son of a hated father." Fragm. 187. Dindorf. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. .'{.'{J 

excited and stirred up by the actions and destiny of the individual cha- 
racters in this middle piece, produce rather a distressing than a pleas- 
ing effect; but under the guidance of sublime and significant itnfl 
they take such a course ofdevelopement, that an elevated yet softened 
tone is shed over them, and all is resolved into a feeling of awe and 
devotion for the decrees of a higher power. 

§ 11. The poetical career of iEschylus concludes for us, as for the 
ancient Athenians, with the only complete trilogy that is extant, the 
possession of which, after the Iliad and Odyssey, might be considered the 
richest treasure of Greek poetry, if it had been better preserved, and had 
come down to us without the gaps and interpolations by which it is 
defaced. /Eschylus brought this trilogy upon the stage at a moment 
of great political excitement in his native city, Olymp. 80. 2. b. c. 45 , 
at the time when the democratic party, under the guidance of Pericles, 
were endeavouring to overthrow the Areopagus, the last of those aris- 
tocratic institutions which tended to restrain the innovating spirit of the 
people in public and private life. He was impelled to make the legend 
of Orestes the groundwork of a trilogic composition, of which, as we have 
still the whole before us, we will give only the principal points. 

Agamemnon comes on the stage in the tragedy which bears his name, 
in one scene only, when he is received by his wife Clytaemnestra as a 
conquering hero, and, after some hesitation, walks over the outspread 
purple carpets into the interior of his palace. He is, however, the chief 
person of the piece, for all through it the actors and chorus are almost 
exclusively occupied with his character and destiny. 

iEschylus represents him as a great and glorious monarch, but w ho, 
by his enterprise against Troy, has sacrificed to his warlike ambition 
the lives of many men,* and, above all, that of his own daughter Jphi- 
genia ;t end he has thus involved in a gloomy destiny his house, which 
is already suffering from wounds inflicted long before his time, t 
taemnestra, on the other hand, is a wife, who, while she pursues her 
impulses and pleasures with unscrupulous resolution, has power and 
cunning enough to carry her evil designs into full effect. Agamemnon 
is completely enveloped in her subtle schemes, even before she throws 
the traitorous garment over him like a net; and after the deed is done, 
she has the skill, in her conversation witli the chorus, to throw over it a 
cloak of that sophistry of the passions, which /Eschylus so well knew 
how to paint, by enumerating all the reasons she might have had lor it, 
had the real ground not been sufficient. 

* « For the gods," says the chorus, (v. 461.) "never lose si^ht of 
been the cause of death to many men" (<r£v voXvktow yxo ol* uaxo-x-. 

+ The chorus does not hesitate to censure tins sacrifice, (especially in v. J 17. | and 
considers it as actually completed, so does Cljrtamoestrs, v. 

lus does not mean by this to set aside the story of IphigenU'l dehver.mee. Acced- 
ing to his view of the case the sacrifice™ themselves imi&t hafS besn blinded 
Artemis. 



332 HISTORY OF THE 

The great tragic effect which this play cannot fail to produce on every 
one who is capable of reading' and understanding it, is the contrast be- 
tween the external splendour of the house of the Atridse and its real 
condition. The first scenes are very imposing ; — the light of the 
beacon, the news of the fall of Troy, and the entrance of Agamemnon; 
— but, amidst these signs of joy, a tone of mournful foreboding resounds 
from the songs of the chorus, which grows more and more distinct 
and impressive till the inimitable scene between the chorus and Cas- 
sandra, when the whole misfortune of the house bursts forth into view. 
From this time forth our feelings are wrought to the highest pitch — the 
murder of Agamemnon follows immediately upon this announcement; 
while the triumph of Clytsemnestra and iEgisthus — the remorseless 
cold-bloodedness with which she exults in the deed, and the laments 
and reproaches of the chorus — leave the mind, sympathizing as it does 
with the fate of the house, in an agony of horror and excitement which 
has not a minute of repose or consolation, except in a sort of feeling 
that Agamemnon has fallen by means of a divine Nemesis. 

§ 12. The Choepkorce contains the mortal revenge of Orestes. The 
natural steps of the action, the revenge planned and resolved upon by 
Orestes with the chorus and Electra, the artful intrigues by which 
Orestes at length arrives at the execution of the deed, the execution 
itself, the contemplation of it after it is committed, all these points Jbrm 
so many acts of the drama. The first is the longest and the most 
finished, as the poet evidently makes it his great object to display dis- 
tinctly the deep distress of Orestes at the necessity he feels of revenging 
his father's death upon his mother. Thus the whole action takes place 
at the tomb of Agamemnon, and the chorus consists of Trojan women 
in the service of the family of the Atridae ; they are sent by Clytsem- 
nestra, who has been terrified by horrid dreams, in order, for the first 
time, to appease with offerings the spirit of her murdered husband, and, 
by the advice of Electra, bring the offerings, but not for the purpose for 
which they were sent. The spirit of Agamemnon is formally conjured 
to appear from below the earth, and to take an active part in the work 
of his own revenge, and the guidance of the whole work is repeatedly 
ascribed to the subterranean gods, especially to Hermes, the leader of 
the dead, who is also the god of all artful and hidden acts; and the 
poet has contrived to shed a gloomy and shadowy light over this whole 
proceeding. The act itself is represented throughout as a sore burthen 
undertaken by Orestes upon the requisition of the subterranean gods, 
and by the constraining influence of the Delphic oracle ; no mean 
motive, no trifling indifference mingle with his resolves, and yet, or 
rather the more on that very account, while Orestes stands beside the 
corpse of his mother and her paramour upon the same spot where his 
father was slain, and justifies his own act by proclaiming the heinous- 
ness of their crime, even at that moment the furies appear before him, 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 333 

and, visible to the spectators, though unseen by the chorus, torture him 
with their horrid forms till he rushes away and hastens to beg for 
atonement and purification from Apollo, who has urged him to the 
deed. We here perceive that, according- to the views of JEschylus and 
other Greeks, the furies do not properly betoken the degree of moral 
guilt or the power of an evil conscience (in which case they must have 
appeared in a more terrible shape to Clytaemnestra than to Orestes) j 
but they exhibit the fearful nature of the deed itself, of a mother's 
murder as such; for this, from whatever motive it may be committed, 
is a violation of the ordinances of nature which cannot fail to torture 
and perplex the human mind. 

§ 13. This character of the Erinnyes is more definitely developed in 
the concluding play of the trilogy, in the chorus of which ASschylus, 
combining the artist with the poet, gives an exhibition of these beings, 
of whom the Greeks had hitherto but a glimmering idea. He bestows 
upon them a form taken partly from their spiritual qualities and partly 
from the analogy of the Gorgons. They avenge the matricidal act 
as a crime in itself, without inquiring into motives or circumstances, 
and it is therefore pursued with all the inflexibility of a law of nature, 
and by all the horror and torments as well of the upper as of the 
lower world. Even the expiation granted by Apollo to Orestes at Delphi 
has no influence upon them ; for all that Apollo can accomplish is to throw 
them for a short period into a deep sleep, from which they are awakened 
by the appearance of the ghost of Clytaemnestra, condemned for her crime 
to wander about the lower world ; and this apparition must have pro- 
duced the greatest effect upon the stage. After the scene in Delphi, we 
are transported to the sanctuary of Pallas Athena, on the Acropolis, 
whither Orestes has repaired by the advice of Apollo, and where, in a 
very regular manner, and with many allusions to the actual usages of 
the Athenian law, the court of the Areopagus is established by Pallas, 
who recognizes the claims of both parties, but is unwilling to arrogate 
to herself the power of arbitrarily deciding the questions between them. 
Before this court of justice the dispute between Orestes and his advocate 
Apollo on the one side, and the furies on the other, is formally dis- 
cussed. In these discussions, it must be owned, there occur many 
points which belong to the main question, and these are, as it were, 
summed up; for instance, the command of Apollo, the vengeance for 
blood which is imposed as a duty upon the son by the ghost of his 
father; the revolting manner in which Agamemnon was murdered; 
nevertheless, the intrinsic difference between the act of Orestes and thai 
of Clytaemnestra is not marked as we should hate expected it to be. 
It is manifest that iEschylus distinctly perceived this difference in feel- 
ing, without quite working it out. Apollo concludes his apology with 
rather a subtle argument, showing why the father is more worth} of 
honour than the mother, by which he makes interest with Pallas, who 



334 HISTORY OP THE 

had no mother, but proceeded at once out of the head of her father, 
Zeus. When the judges, of whom there are twelve,* come to the vote, 
it is found that the votes on each side are equal ; upon this the goddess 
gives the casting vote — " the voting pebble of Athena," — the destina- 
tion of which she has declared beforehand, and so decides in favour of 
Orestes. The poet here means to imply that the duty of revenge and 
the guilt of matricide are equally balanced, and that stern justice has no 
alternative; but the gods of Olympus, being of the nature of man, and 
acquainted and entrusted with the personal condition of individuals, 
can find and supply a refuge for the unfortunate, who are so by no im- 
mediate guilt of their own. Hence the repeated references to the over- 
ruling name of Zeus, who always steps in between contending powers 
as the saviour- god (Ztvg o-wr?/p),t and" invariably turns the scale in 
favour of virtue. After his acquittal, Orestes leaves the stage with 
blessings and promises of friendly alliance with Athens, but somewhat 
more hastily than we expected, after the intense interest which his fate 
has inspired. But the cause of this is seen in the heart-felt love of 
iEschylus for the Athenians. The goddess of wisdom, who has veiled 
her power in the mildest and most persuasive form, succeeds in soothing 
the rage of the furies, which threatens to bring destruction upon 
Athens, by promising to ensure them for ever the honour and respect 
of the Athenians ; and thus the whole concludes with a song of blessing 
by the furies (wherein, on the supposition that their power is duly ac- 
knowledged, they assume the character of beneficent deities), and with 
the establishment of the worship of the Eumenides, who are at once 
conducted by torchlight to their sanctuary in the Areopagus with all the 
pomp with which their sacrifices at Athens were attended. The 
Athenians are here plainly admonished to treat with reverence the 
Areopagus thus founded by the gods, and the judicial usages of which are 
so closely connected with the worship of the Eumenides ; and not to 
take from that body its cognizance of charges of murder, as was about 
to be done, in order to transfer their functions to the great jury courts. 
The stasima, too, in which the ideas of the piece appear still more 
clearly than in the treatment of the mythus, utter no sentiment more 
definitely than this ; that it is above all things necessary to recognize 
without hesitation a power which bridles the unruly affections and sinful 
thoughts of man. J 

We may remark in few words, that the satyrical drama which was 
appended to this trilogy, the Proteus, was in all probability connected 
with the same mythical subject, and turned upon the adventure of 
Menelaus and Helen with Proteus, the sea-daemon and keeper of the 

* The number twelve is inferred from the arrangement of the short speeches 
made by the parties while the voting is going on (v. 710 — 733.) 
f Vv. 759, 797, 1045. 

+ %VfAtp$gU ffUlpgOViTv VfTO ffTiVU, V. 520, 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 335 

sea-monsters, an adventure which is known to us from IJomcr. The 
useless wanderings of Menelaus, who on his return home left his 
brother behind, and thereby arrived too late not only to save, but 
even to avenge him,* might give room for abundant mirth and en- 
tertainment, without disturbing or effacing the impressions which had 
been produced by the tragic fate of the house of the Atridae. 

§ 14. These short accounts of those trilogies of /Esehylus which 
have been preserved, in whole or in part, will suffice, we conceive, to 
give as much insight into the mind of that great poet as can be expected 
in a work of this kind. It must be confessed, however, that there is a 
wide difference between these cold abstracts of the dramas of iEschylus 
and the tone and character of the works themselves, which, even in the 
minutest details of execution, show all the power of a mind full of poetic 
inspiration, and impressed with the truth and profoundness of its own 
conceptions. As all the persons brought on the stage by yEschylus ex- 
press their feelings and characters in strong and forcible terms, so also 
the forms of speech they make use of have a proud and lofty tone ; the 
diction of these plays is like a temple of Ictinus, constructed solely of 
huge rectangular blocks of polished marble. In the individual expres- 
sions, the poetical form predominates over the syntactical ; this is 
brought about by the employment of metaphorical phrases and new 
compounds :f and here the poet's great knowledge and true compre- 
hension of nature and human life give to his expressions a vividness 
and warmth which only differs from the naivete of the epic style by the 
greater admixture of acute reflection which it displays, and by which he 
has contrived to mark at once a feeling of connexion and a conscious- 
ness of difference.^: The forms of syntax are rather those which rest 
upon a parallel connexion of sentences (consequently, copulative, ad- 
versative, and disjunctive sentences) than those which result from the 
subordination of one sentence to another (as in causal and conditional 
periods, &c). The language has little of that oratorical flow which at 
a later period sprung up in the courts and assemblies, and just as little 
of a subtle developement of complicated connexions of thought. It is 
throughout better calculated to display powerful impulses of the feelings 
and desires, and the instinctive actions of prompt and decided character, 
than the reflection of minds impelled by various motives. Hence in 
each piece we find some leading thoughts frequently repeated* particu- 
larly in the different forms of speech, dialogue, anapaests, lyric me88tl 

* Comp. above chap. VI. § 5. and Agam. G24, 839. 

f We may also mention his employment of obsolete expression*, especially tl 

borrowed from epic poetry — to yXutraulu rr,s ki?iu;. /Eschylus is ■ few Mg 
more epic in his language than Sophocles or Euripides. 

X Hence arise the oxymora of which yEschylus is so fond : for in>: i lie 

calls dust " the dumb messenger of the army." 



336 HISTORY OP THE 

&c. Yet the poet by no means wants the power of adapting his lan- 
guage to the different characters, lo say nothing of all those differences 
which depend upon the metrical forms ; and, notwithstanding the 
general elevation of his style, persons of an inferior grade, such as the 
watchman in the Agamemnon, and the nurse of Orestes in the Choe- 
phorce, are made to descend, as well in the words as in the turn of the 
expressions, to the use of language more nearly approaching that of 
common life, and manifest even in the collocation of their words a 
weaker order of mind. 

§ 15. To return once more to the Orestean trilogy of Orestes : the 
judges of tragic merit adjudged the prize to it before all the rival pieces. 
But this poetic victory seems to have been no compensation to 
iEschylus for the failure of the practical portion of his design, as the 
Athenians at the same time deprived the Areopagus of all the honour 
and power which the poet had striven to preserve for it. zEschylus re- 
turned a second time to Sicily, and died in his favourite city of Gela, 
three years after the performance of the Orestea. 

The Athenians had a feeling that iEschylus would not be satisfied 
with the course their public life and their taste for art and science took 
in the next generation ; the shadow of the poet, as he is brought up by 
Aristophanes from the other world in the "Frogs," manifests an angry 
discontent with the public, who were so pleased with Euripides, although 
the latter was no rival of iEschylus, for he did not appear upon the stage 
till the year in which iEschylus died. Yet this did not prevent the 
Athenians from recognizing most fully the beauty and sublimity of 
his poetry. " With him his muse died not," said Aristophanes, allud- 
ing to the fact that his tragedies were allowed to be performed after his 
death, and might even be brought forward as new pieces. The poet, , 
who taught his chorus the plays of iEschylus, was remunerated by the 
state, and the crown was dedicated to the poet who had been long 
dead.* The family of iEschylus, which continued for a long time, pre- 
served a school of poetry in his peculiar style, which we will hereafter 
notice. 

* This is the result of the passages in the Vita JEschyli ; Philostrat. Vita Apollon. 
vi. 11. p. 245, Olear.; SchoL Aristoph. Acharn. 10. Ran. 892. The Vila JEschyli 
says that the poet was crowned after his death ; and this view seems preferable to 
Quinctilian's assertion (Inst. x. 1), that many other poets obtained the crown by re- 
presenting the plays of yEschylus. We must distinguish from this case the victories 
of Euphorion (above, § 2 and note) obtained by producing plays of IEschylus that 
had not been represented ; the law of Lycurgus, too, with regard to the representa- 
tion of pieces by the three great tragedians, from copies officially verified, has 
nothing to do with the custom alluded to in the text. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 337 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



§ 1. Condition in which tragic poetry came into the hands of Sophurh-s. His first 
appearance. §2. Subsequent events of his life ; his devotion to the drama. § 3. 
Epochs in the poetry of Sophocles. § 4. Thorough change in the form of tra- 
gedy. § f>. Outline of his plays ; the Antigone. $ 6. The Electa. $ 7. The 
Trachinian Women. § 8. King CEdipus. § 9. The Ajax. $ 10. The Philoc- 
tetes. § 11,12. The CEdipus at Colonus, in connexion with the character and 
conduct of Sophocles in his latter years. § 13. The style of Sophocles. 

§ 1. Tiie tragic trilogies of ./Eschylus had given a dramatic represen- 
tation of the great cycle of Hellenic legends. In exhibiting the history 
of whole families, tribes, and states, the poet had contrived to show the 
influence of supreme wisdom and power shining amidst the greatest 
difficulty and darkness. Every Greek, who witnessed such an exhibition 
of the dispensations of Providence in the history of his race, must have 
been filled with mingled emotions of wonder and joyful exultation. 
A tragedy of this kind was at once political, patriotic, and religious. 

How was it possible that, after these mighty creations of so great a 
genius as iEschylus, a still fairer renown should be in reserve for 
Sophocles? In what direction could such great advances be made 
from the point to which /Eschylus had brought the tragic art ? 

We will not indulge ourselves in an a priori determination of the 
way in which this advance might have been made, but will rather con- 
sider, with history for our guide, how it really took place. Jt will be 
seen that the change was retrograde as well as progressive ; that it 
something was gained on the oneside.it was because something was 
also given up on the other; and that it was due above all to that 
moderation and sobriety of character, which was the noblest and mosl 
amiable property of the Greek mind. 

Before we can solve the great question proposed above, we musl gi\c 
an account of so much of the poet's life as may be necessary for in un- 
derstanding of his poetical career. 

Sophocles, the son of Sophilus, was born at the Attic demns, 
village of Colonus, in Olymp. 71. 8. u.c. 19.').* He was, therefore, 
fifteen years old when the battle of Salamis was fought He could 
not, of course, share in the dangers of the tight, but he wai I 
chus, or leader of the chorus which sang the pean of l I in 

that capacity appeared naked, according to the rule in gymnastic BOlem- 

* This is the statement in the Pita SbpfooAf. Th« PSlitfl m.iri '.<• D 

two years older, but this is opposed to the fact BMOtioSjSd in the note tu | 

/ 



338 HISTORY OF THE 

nities, anointed with oil, and holding a lyre in his left hand. The 
managers of the feast had selected him for this purpose on account of 
his youthful beauty* and the musical education which he had received. 

Eleven or twelve years after this, in Olymp. 77. 4. B.c.f 468, Sopho- 
cles came forward for the first time as a competitor in a dramatic con- 
test, and, indeed, as a rival of the old hero iEschylus. This happened 
at the great Dionysia, when the first Archon presided ; it was his duty 
to nominate the judges of the contest. Cimon, who had just conquered 
the pirates of Scyros, and brought back to Athens the bones of Theseus, 
happened to come into the theatre along with his colleagues in order 
to pay the suitable offerings to Bacchus, and Aphepsion the archon 
thought it due to the importance of the contest to submit the decision 
of the poetical victory to these glorious victors in real battle. Cimon, 
a man of the old school, and of noble moderation of character, who 
undoubtedly appreciated iEschylus, gave the prize to his young rival, 
from which we may infer how completely his genius outshone all com- 
petition, even at his first coming out. The play with which he gained 
this victory is said to have been the TriptolemuSjj a patriotic piece, in 
which this Eleusinian hero is celebrated as promoting the cultivation 
of corn, and humanizing the manners even of the wildest barbarians. 

§ 2. The first piece of Sophocles which has been preserved is twenty- 
eight years subsequent to this event ; it is remarkable as also marking 
a glorious period in the poet's life. Sophocles brought out the Anti- 
gone in Olymp. 84. 4. B.C. 440. The goodness of the play, but above 
all the shrewd reflexions and admirable sentiments on public matters 
which are frequently expressed in it, induced the Athenians to elect 
him to the office of general for the ensuing year. It must be re- 
membered that the ten Strategi were not merely the commanders of the 
troops, but also very much employed in the administration of affairs at 
home, and in carrying on negociations with foreign states. Sophocles 
was one of the generals, who, in 'conjunction with Pericles, carried on 
the war with the aristocrats of Samos, who, after being expelled from 
Samos by the Athenians, had returned from Ansea on the continent 
with Persian aid, and stirred up the island to revolt against Athens.§ 
This war was carried on in Olymp. 85. 1. B.C. 440, 439. 

* Athenseus I. p. 20. f'., in speaking of this occasion, says that Sophocles was 
xcekh rh eo^otv, which applies best to the age assigned to him above. 

f All new dramas at Athens were performed at the Lenaea and the great Dio- 
nysia, the former of which took place in the month Gamelion, the latter in Elaphe- 
bolion, and therefore in the second half of the Attic or Olympian year, after the 
winter solstice ; consequently, in the history of the drama we must always reckon 
the year of the Olympiad equal to the year b.c. in which its second half falls. 

X This appears from a combination of the narrative in the text with a chrono- 
logical statement in Pliny N. H. XVIII. 12. 

§ On this account the Vita Sophoclis calls the war, in the management of which 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. XVJ 

According to several old anecdotes, Sophocles pi, .,n in 

the bustle of war his eheerfulness of temper, and that poetical die] 
tion which delightfl in ■ clear and tranquil contemplation of liuman 
affairs. It was also on this occasion that Sophocles became at -.piaintcd 
with Herodotus, who about this time was living at .Samus (chap. 
XIX. § 1.), and composed a poem for him, no doubt a lyrical our.* Iti^ 
interesting to think of the social intercourse of two such nun with one 
another. They both scrutinized the knowledge of human aliairs with 
calm and comprehensive vision ; but the Sainian, with a mOTC boyieh 
disposition, sought out the traditions of many nations and many lands, 
while the Athenian had applied his riper and more searching intellect 
to that which was immediately before him, — the secret working 
power and passion in the breast of every man. 

It is doubtful whether Sophocles took any further pert in public 
affairs at a later period. On the whole, he was, as his contemporary 
Ion of Chios tells us,f neither very well acquainted with politics nor 
particularly qualified for public business. In all this, he did not 
beyond the ordinary standard of individuals of the bitter sort. It is 
clear that, in his case, as in that of iEschylus, poetry was the bneinOM 
of his life. The study and exercise of the art of poetry occupied the 
whole of his time, as appears at once from the number of his dramas. 
There existed under his name 130 plays, of which, according to the 
grammarian Aristophanes, seventeen were wrongly ascribed to him. 
The remaining 113 seem to comprise tragedies and satyrica! dramas. 
In several of the tetralogies, however, the satyrical drama must have I 
lost or perhaps never existed (as we find to be the case with other p 
also), because otherwise the number could not have been so uneven ; 
at the utmost there could only have been twenty-three extant sat\rical 
dramas to ninety tragedies. All these pieces were brought out between 
Olymp. 77. 4. B.C. 468, when Sophocles iirM came forward, and Olwnp. 
93. 2. B.C. 406, when he died ; consequently, in a period ofsixty-tWO 
years, the last of which, comprehending his extreme old nge, cannot 
have added much to the number. The years of the lYIoponuesian 
war must have been the most prolific; for if we may depend upon the 

Sophocles took a part, tov -x^os 'Av«;«v -rlktpev. The list ofgenerali in this ■ 
preserved to a certain extent complete in a fragment of Amhotion. quoted bj 
Scholiast on Aristides, p. 225 C (p. 182, Kd. l-ionnm-l.) 

* See Plutarch An son, &C 3., where this story is brought in l>\ 
shoulders. It is from this poem, of course, that the author of tl 
derives his assertion with regard to the age of SophocU* ;tt th« tin. 
war; otherwise, how did he come to make in UteHion 10 '■■ - ■ 

nana ? We must, therefore, emend the read 

the passage in Plutarch, where the text is more to he depended on. This » ill ; 

Sophocles°55 years old at this period. 
f AthenacusXIII.p.G03. 

z 2 



340 HISTORY OF THE 

tradition* that the Antigone was the thirty-second play in a chrono- 
logical arrangement of the dramas of Sophocles, there still remain 
eighty-one dramas for the second half of his poetical career ; or, if we 
leave out the satyrical dramas, we have about fifty-eight pieces remain- 
ing'. We arrive at the same result from a date relating to Euripides, 
of whose pieces, said to be ninety-two in number, the Alcestis was the 
sixteenth. t Now, according to the same authority, the Alcestis was 
exhibited in Olymp. 85. 2. B.C. 438, the seventeenth year of the poetical 
life of Euripides, which lasted for forty-nine, from Olymp. 81. I. b.c. 
455, to Olymp. 93. 2. b.c. 406. It may be seen from this, that at first 
both poets brought out a tetralogy every three or four years, but after- 
wards every two years at least. A consequence of this more rapid 
production appears in that slight regard for, or rather the absolute 
neglect of, the stricter models, which has been remarked in the lyrical 
parts of tragedy after the 90th or 89th Olympiad. 

§ 3. As far as one can judge from internal and external evidence, the 
remaining tragedies are all subsequent to the Antigone : the following 
is perhaps their chronological order; Antigone, Electra, Trachinian 
Women, King (Edipus, Ajax, Philoctetes, GEdipus at Colonus. The 
only definite information we possess is that the Philoctetes was acted in 
Olymp. 92. 3. b.c. 409, and the (Edipus at Colonus not till Olymp. 
94. 3. B.C. 401, when it was brought out by the younger Sophocles, the 
author being dead. Taken together, they exhibit the art of Sophocles 
in its full maturity, in that mild grandeur which Sophocles was the first 
to appropriate to himself, when, after having (to use a remarkable ex- 
pression of his own which has been preserved) put away the pomp of 
JEschylus along with his boyish things, and laid aside a harshness of 
manner, which had sprung up from his own too great art and refine- 
ment, he had at length attained to that style which he himself con- 
sidered to be the best and the most suited to the representation of the 
characters of men. % In the Antigone, the Trachinian Women, and the 
Electra, we have still, perhaps, a little of that artificial style and studied 

* See the hypothesis to the Antigone, by Aristophanes of Byzantium. If the 
number thirty-two included the satyrical dramas also, some of the trilogies must 
have been without this appendage ; otherwise the thirty-second piece would have 
been a satyrical drama. 

f See the didascalia to the Alcestis e cod. Vaticano published by Dindorf in the 
Oxford edition 1836. The number <2-' is, in accordance with this view, changed to 
<r', which suits the reckoning better than /£'. We have a third date of this kind in 
the Birds of Aristophanes, which is the thirty-fifth of that poet's comedies. 

X The important passage, quoted by Plutarch, De Profectu Virtut. Sent. p. 79. B., 
should undoubtedly be written as follows: — o l.oQox'kns skiys, rov Ato-%v\w lix- 
vci<xu.lx ) us elyxov, lira <ro vrtxgov xou xuru.ri%vov <rrn ccvroZ xarciffxivT;;, lis t^'ivov %oi>i 
to t7,; \i%ius ftiru(ia./.ku» uo*o;, 'o<rig lirrtv 'hStxurccrov xat (iiXrio-rov. 

[The xarctaxivn here opposed to the ki%i; means the language or words as op- 
posed to the style or their arrangement. See Plutarch Comp. Aristoph, et Menandr. 
p. 853. C. iv rn xwrv.o'xiv'vi ray ovoftcirwv,—- Ed.] 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT OIIELCE. Ml! 

obscurity which Sophocles objected to in himself; the Ajai ind Phi- 
loctetes, as well as the two GBdipustS, show, in B maun- r which cannot 
be mistaken, an easier flow of language than his earlier plays, and do 
not require so great an effort on the part of the reader. Neverthi 
the tragic art of Sophocles is fully shown in all of them, and is like- 
nothing' but itself; Sophocles must have hit upon the changes which 
he introduced into the tragedy ofJSschylus, long before he wrote any 
one of those plays, and must have already made, in accordance with 
his principles, a complete change in the whole constitution of tragedy. 

§ 4. We have mentioned these alterations, as fur a-, concerns the 
details, in the two preceding chapters: we must lure consider their 
connexion with the change of the whole essence and organisa- 
tion of tragedy effected by Sophocles. The foundation and corner- 
stone of this new edifice, which was erected on the same area as the 
old building, but according to a different plan, was always this, that, 
though Sophocles still followed the old usages and laws, and always, or 
as a general rule, exhibited atone time three tragedies and a satyrical 
drama, he nevertheless loosened the connexion of these pieces with one 
another, and presented to the public not one great dramatic poein, but 
four separate poetical works, which might just as well have been 
brought forward at different festivals.* The tragic poet, too, no lm 
proposed to himself to exhibit a series of mythical actions, the develope- 
mentof the complicated destinies of families and tribes, which was in- 
consistent with the compass and unity of plan required 1>\ separate tra- 
gedies; he was obliged to limit himself to one leading fact, and, to 
take the example of the Orestea, could only oppose to such a tri 
fragments of itself, like the Electra of Sophocles or Euripides, in which 
everything is referred to the murder of Clytssmnestra. The tragedies 
subsequent to Olymp. 80 had indeed become considerably longer,t 
which is said to have originated with Aristarehus, a tragedian who 
made his appearance in Olymp. 81. 2. b.c. 454.] The Agamemnon 
of JEschylus, however, the first piece of his last trilogy, is considerably 
longer than the others, and nearly of the same length SS a pi 
Sophocles. Still, this extension has not been effected l>y an increase in 
the action, which even in Sophocles turns upon a single point, and 
seldom, as in the Antigone, is divided into several important moments, 

* As e. g. Euripides brought out in B.C. 431 tin- Iffedea, Philocb 
the satyrical drama "the Reapers" (H.«^*t«i') : in n.i. -Ill V 
CEdipus, Lycaon, Baccba, and the Mtyrieal drama ■' the Athsm sa " 

f E. g. the Persians, 107(3; BupplUnft, 1074 
Prometheus, 1093. On the other ham!, tin- Agamemnoo, 1673 ; th< 
1353; King CEdipuf , 1530; (Edipm at Colonus, h ling to the numb 

JDindorfs edition. 

\ Suidas V. 'Atfrru£%«s.-»'o'i t^Ztoi l/f ra riff oiirii (*n*»{ r» 3f«'/*«r« xmrle 
Eusebius gives us the year of his liist appsanBCS. 



342 HISTORY OF THE 

but is entirely subservient to the developement of the events out of the 
character and passions of actors, and belongs to the delineation of their 
state of mind. The lyrical element, on the contrary, so far from gaining 
anything by this extension, was considerably diminished, especially in 
the part which fell to the chorus, since it is clear that Sophocles did not 
feel himself so much called upon, as iEschylus did, to represent the im- 
pression of the events and circumstances upon those who took no part 
in them, and to lend his voice to express the feelings of right-minded 
spectators, which was the chief business of the tragic chorus, but he 
directed his efforts to express what was going on in the bosoms of the 
persons whose actions were represented on the stage. 

It is sufficiently obvious that the introduction of the third actor 
(chap. XXII. § 7.) was necessary for this change. The dialogue 
naturally gains much in variety by the addition of a third inter- 
locutor ; for this enables the characters to show themselves on dif- 
ferent sides. If it is the property of the tritagonist to produce oppo- 
sition on the part of the first person by gainsaying him, the deuter- 
agonist, on the other hand, may, in friendly conversation, draw from 
his bosom its gentler feelings and more secret thoughts. It was not 
till the separation of the deuteragonist from the tritagonist that we 
could have persons like Chrysothemis by the side of Electra, and Is- 
mene by the side of Antigone, who elevate the vigour of the chief cha- 
racter by the opposition and contrast of a gentler womanhood.* 

These outward changes in the stage business of tragedy enable us 
at once to see the point to which Sophocles desired to bring tragic 
poetry ; he wished to make it a true mirror of the impulses, passions, 
strivings, and struggles of the soul of man. While he laid aside those 
great objects of national interest, which made the Greek look upon the 
time gone by as a high and a holy thing, and to keep up the remem- 
brance of which the art of JSschylus had been for the most part dedi- 
cated, the mythical subjects gained in his hands a general, and there- 
fore a lasting significance. The rules of Greek art obliged him to 
depict strong and great characters, and the shocks to which they are 
exposed are exceedingly violent ; they are drawn, however, with such 
intrinsic truth that every man may recognize in them in some points a 
likeness of himself: the corrections and limitations of the exercise of 
man's will, and the requirements and laws of morality are expressed in 
the most forcible manner. There has hardly been any poet whose 
works can be compared with those of Sophocles for the universality 
and durability of their moral significance. 

§ 5. We cannot here attempt to submit the plan of the different 
tragedies of Sophocles to a circumstantial analysis (to which the re- 
marks in chap. XXII. furnish a sort of introduction) ; it will, however, 
* Comp. Schol. on the Electra, 328. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIEM 

be in accordance with the object of this work to take I mmer ffc 
the particular situations which Conn the turning points of the different 
plays, and of the ethical ideas which an I in them. 

The Antigone turns entirely on the contest between the inter.-. ta 
and requirements of the state and the rights and duties of the family. 
Thebes haj successfully repulsed the attack of the Argfrearmj ; bul I 
neices, one of her citizens, and a member of the Theban royal fiunfly, 
dead before the walls among the enemies who had .threatened Thebes 
with fire and sword. Creon, the king of Thebes, only follows I Custom 
of the Greeks, the object of which was to preserve a state from the 
attacks of its own citizens, when he leaves the enemy of his n 
land unburied as a prey to dogs and vultures; yet the manner in 
which he keeps up this political principle, the excessive severity of the 
punishment denounced against those who wished to bury the ori.se, 
the terrible threats addressed to those who watched it. and, still more, 
the boastful and violent strain in which he sets fortli and extols his own 
principles — all this gives us a proof of that infatuation of a narrow 
mind, unenlightened by gentleness of a higher nature, which appeared to 
the Greeks to contain in itself a foreboding of approaching misfortune. 
But what was to be done by the relations of the dead man, the femafc 
his family, on whom the care of the corpse was imposed as a religious 
duty by the universal law of the Greeks? That they should feel U 
duty to the family in all its force, and not comprehend what they owed 
to the state, is in accordance with the natural character of women ; but 
while the one sister, Ismene, only sees the impossibility of performing 
the former duty, the great soul of Antigone lues with the occai 01, 
and forms resolves of the greatest boldness. Defiant defiance : 

Creon's harsh decree calls forth in her breast the most obstinate, in- 
flexible self-will, which disregards all consequences, and despises all 
gentler means. In this consists her guilt, which Sophocles does not 
conceal ; on the contrary, he brings it prominently before US, and es- 
pecially in the choruses;* but the very reason why AntigODS Es BO 
highly tragical a character is this, that, notwithstanding the crime she 
has committed, she appears to us so great and so amiable. The sen- 
tinel's description of her, how she came to the corpse in the burning- 
heat of the sun, while a scorching whirlwind ( r » s)Ac J WSJ throwing all 
nature into confusion, and how she raised a shrill cry of woe when 
saw that the earth she had scattered over it had been taken away, is a 
picture of a being, who, possessed by BU ethical idea as h\ BA irresistible 
law of nature, blindly follows her own noble impulses. 

It must, however, be insisted on that it is not the tragical end 
this great and noble creature, but the disclosure ofCreou'l infatuation, 
which forms the general object of the tragedy] and that, allhoUj 
* See particularly v. 8J3. Diadorf: irf»/55/ \r y IrgMrt* '; 



344 HISTORY OF THE 

Sophocles considers Antigone's act as going beyond what women should 
dare, he lays much more stress on the truth ; that there is something 
holy without and above the state, to which the state should pay respect 
and reverence : a doctrine which Antigone declares with such irresist- 
ible truth and sublimity.* Every movement in the course of this 
piece which could shake Creon in the midst of his madness, and open 
his eyes to his own situation, turns upon this and is especially directed 
to him : — the noble security with which Antigone relies on the holiness 
of her deed ; the sisterly affection of Ismene, who would willingly share 
the consequences of the act ; the loving zeal of Hsemon, who is at first 
prudent and then desperate ; the warnings of Teiresias ; — all are in vain, 
till the latter breaks out into those prophetic threatenings of misfortune 
which at last, when it is too late, penetrate Creon's hardened heart. 
Haemon slays himself on the body of Antigone, the death of the mother 
follows that of her son, and Creon is compelled to acknowledge that 
there are blessings in one's family for which no political wisdom is an 
adequate substitute. 

§ 6. The characteristics of the art of Sophocles are most prominently 
shown in the Electra, because we have here an opportunity of making 
a direct comparison with the Orestea of iEschylus, and in particular 
with the Cho&phorce. Sophocles takes an entirely ditferent view of this 
mythological subject, as well by representing the punishment of Cly- 
tsemnestra without the connexion of a trilogy, as by making Electra the 
chief character and protagonist. This was impracticable in the case of 
iEschylus, for he was obliged to make Orestes, who was the chief per- 
son in the legend, also the chief character in the drama. But for So- 
phocles' finer delineation of character, and for his psychological views, 
Electra was a much more suitable heroine. For while Orestes, a matri- 
cide from duty and conscience, an avenger of blood from his birth, 
and especially intrusted with this commission by the Delphic oracle, 
appears to be urged to it by a superior power ; Electra, on the con- 
trary, is sustained in her burning hatred against her mother and her 
mother's paramour, by her own feelings, — which are totally different 
from those of her sister Chrysothemis, — by her entire devotion to the 
sublime image of her murdered father, which is ever present to her 
mind, by disgust for her mother's pride and lust, in short by the 
most secret impulses of a young maiden's heart : that ./Egisthus wears 
the robes of Agamemnon, that Clytaemnestra held a feast on the day of 
her husband's murder, these are continually recurring provocations. 
Such is the character which Sophocles has made the central figure in his 
tragedy, a character in which the warmest feelings are blended with the 
peculiar shrewdness that distinguished the female character at the time 
represented, and he has contrived to give such a direction to the plot, 

V. 450, oh ya.£ ri f/,a Ziiif n* — -j 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 

that the interest is entirely centered in the actions and feelingl ol 
person. According to yEschylus, Orestes had been driven from the 
house by Clytaemnestra, and sent to Strophiua of Phocia ; he ftf] 

in the paternal mansion as an expelled and illegally disinherited ton. 
According to Sophocles, Orestes, (hen a child, was to bare been put to 
death when Agamemnon was murdered, and it was only Electra who 
rescued him and put him under the care of his lathers friend, Rtro- 
phius,* by which she gains the credit of having preserved an a\< | 
of her father, and a deliverer of the whole family. f On the oi her hand, 
Sophocles is obliged to omit the secret plot between Oreetcfl and 
Electra, and their conspiracy to effect the murder, which is the 
leading incident in the play of ^Eschylus, because Sophocles did 
not set so much importance on making Electra a participator in the 
deed, as in exhibiting the mind of the high-souled maiden driven 
about by a storm of contending emotions. This he effects by boom 
slight modifications of the story, in which he makes all possible use <»t 
his predecessor's ideas, but follows them out and works them up with 
such gentle and delicate touches that they tit exactly with his 
new plan. iEschylus had already hit upon the contrivance by which 
Orestes gets into the house of the Atrida? ; he appeared as an ally and 
vassal of the house with the pretended funeral urn of Orestes; + hut 
Electra had herself planned this device with him, and speaks in conceit 
with him ; consequently, the completion of the scheme commences im- 
mediately after the first leading division of the play. In Sophocles, 
where there is no such concert between him and his sister, Electra is 
herself deceived by the trick, and is cast down and grieved in the same 
degree as Clytaemnestra, after a transient outbreak of maternal affection, 
is gladdened and trancmillized by it.§ The funeral offerings ofOreatea 
at his father's grave, which in .Eschylus lead to the recognition, in 
Sophocles only excite a hope in Chrysothemis, which is at once cast 
down by Electra, who refuses to take comfort from it. Her desire for 
revenge becomes only the more urgent when she believes herself de- 
prived of all help from man; her grief reaches its highest point when she 
holds in her arms the sepulchral urn, which she supposes to contain her 

* It is for this reason that Sophocles considers Strophiui ofCrisa as the friend of 

Agamemnon and. his children, and therefore he limine* Phanoteutj tl 
state hostile to the Ciiucans, as the person who Modi Clytssmnrstrs th< 

about her son, although Strophiua had collected and sent the ashes I 

f Euripides, in his Electra, gives this incident up again, end supposes that 
Electra and Orestes were separated from one another as chUrm, 

I Up to v. 548 of the Choephoru-, Oreetei we in the common dn iier ; 

it is not before v. 652 that lie a] pears in a different COStuine as fagugiMf of the 1 
§ It was a kindly trait in Sophocles, which would never have occurred to 
chylus, that Clytwmnestrn'a first feeling, when sin- hears the news, is a natural emo- 
tion of love for the child, which she had home with pain and travail, v. 770, 



346 HISTORY OF THE 

only hope. As it is Orestes himself who gives it to her, the recognition 
scene follows immediately, and this constitutes the revolution, or peri- 
peteia, as the ancients called it. The death of Clytaemnestra and 
jEgisthus is treated by Sophocles more as a necessary consequence of 
the rest, and less as the chief incident ; and while it is the aim of Ms- 
chylus to place this action^ itself in its proper light, Sophocles at once 
relaxes his efforts as soon as Electra is relieved from her sorrow and 
disquietude. 

§ 7. The Trachinian Women of Sophocles has also entirely the plan 
and object of a delineation of character, and the imperfections, with 
which this play is not altogether unreasonably charged, arise from the 
conflict between the legend on which the play is founded, and the in- 
tentions of Sophocles. The tragical end of Hercules forms the subject 
of the play ; Sophocles, however, has again made the heroine Deianeira, 
and not Hercules, the chief person in the play. Sorrow arising from 
love, this is the moving theme of the drama, and, treated as the poet 
wished it to be, it is one possessing the greatest beauties. All Deia- 
neira's thoughts and endeavours are directed towards regaining the love 
of her husband, on whom her whole dependence is placed, and towards 
assuring herself of his constant attachment to herself. By pursuing 
this impulse without sufficient foresight, she brings upon him, as it ap- 
pears to her, the most frightful misery and ruin. By this her fate is 
decided ; but in the ancient tragedy, even when a person perishes, it is 
possible, by a justification of his name and memory, to attain to that 
tranquillizing effect, which was required by the feelings of Sophocles as 
well as by those of iEschylus. It is this, not to speak of the conclusion 
of the legend itself, which is the object of the best part of the Trachinian 
Women, in which Hercules appears as the chief character, and, after 
uttering the most violent imprecations against his wife, at last acknow- 
ledges that Deianeira, influenced by love alone, had only contributed to 
bring about the end which fate had destined for him.* It is true that 
Hercules does not, as we might expect, give way to compassionate la- 
mentations for Deianeira, and earnest wishes that she were present to 
receive his parting forgiveness. The feelings of a Greek would be satis- 
fied by the hero's quitting the world without uttering any reproaches 
against his unhappy wife, for this removes any real grounds for repre- 
hension. 

§ 8. We shall form the clearest idea of the meaning of King (Edipus, 
if we consider what it does not mean. It does not contain a history of 
the crime of QEdipus and its detection ; but this crime, which fate had 
brought upon him, without his knowledge or his will, forms a dark and 
gloomy background on which the action of the drama itself is painted 
* Hyllus says of her, v. 1136 : «Vav ro xfift r t fta^rt } x^wtu pupivn. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 347 

with bold and strong- colours. The action of the drama has ret. 
throughout to the discovery of these horrors, and the moral ideas, which 
are developed in it, must be brought out in this discovery, ii tin 
particularly contained in it. Let us consider, then, what cha 
place inOEdipus in the course of the tragedy. At the beginning, not 
only is he praised by the Thebans in the most emphatic terms as the 
best and wisest of men, but he also shows that he is himself fully con- 
scious of his own worth, and well satisfied with the me— uriD he 
has set on foot, in the first instance, to investigate the cause of fa 
structive malady, and then to discover the murderer of Lalus ; and in 
this he is not disturbed by any misgiving, not even by the faintest 
shadow of a suspicion, that he himself may be this murderer. Jn this 
self-reliance, and the confidence which springs from it, we have an 
explanation of the violence and unjustifiable warmth with which 
CEdipus repels the declaration of Teiresias, that he himself b\ 
presence has brought pollution on the land, which he ought to remove 
by withdrawing as soon as possible. Here an occasion was presented 
on which CEdipus should have felt how vain and perishable human 
greatness is, how weak the virtue of man; on which he ought to ha\e 
examined his heart, and to have questioned himself whether there was 
no dark spot in his life to which this fearful crime might correspond. 
Such, however, is his self-confidence, that, where the (ruth comei 
near to him, he sees only falsehood and treason, and maintains his 
fancied security, until, in a conversation with Iocasta, when she men- 
tions that La'ius was murdered at a place where three roads }>ic>' y he is 
for the first time disturbed by a sudden suspicion,* and an entire re- 
volution takes place in his mind. It is particularly worthy of remark 
that the steps which Iocasta takes to tranquillize her husband, and to 
banish all the terror occasioned by the prophecies of Teiresias, are just 
those which lead to a discovery of all the horrors; she endeavours to 
prove the nothingness of the prophetic art by means of that whicjl 
shortly afterwards confirms its authority. We ma) recognise in this, 
as in many other features of this tragedy, distinct traces of that lubHtne 
irony, which expresses the poet's sorrow for the limitation of human 
existence by striking contrasts between the conceptions of the individual 
and the real state of the case. It is expressed in many pi f the 

tragedies of Sophocles, but is particularly developed in King Q 

for the theme of the whole is the infatuation of man in regard to his 
own destiny, and in this play the idea is echoed e\en t>\ the words and 
turns of expression.! The same sort of peripeteia is further repeated 

* Olflf fi a.Ktiv<ra.*T itor'mif i\;i/, yvtat, 

f See Mr. Thirlwall'a excellent easay " on the Irony of Bophodi Phi- 

lological Museum, Vol. 11. No. VI. p- 4 



348 HISTORY OF THE 

when (Edipus has allowed himself to be calmed by his queen, and 
believes that the news he has received of the death of his parents in 
Corinth has freed him from all fear of having committed the horrible 
crimes denounced by the oracle : it is, however, by the narrative of this 
same messenger, with regard to his discovery on Cithseron, that he is 
suddenly torn from this state of security, and from that moment, though 
Jocasta sees at one glance the whole connexion of their horrible fate, 
he cannot rest or be quiet until he has become fully convinced of his 
parricidal act, and of his incestuous connexion with his mother. He 
accordingly inflicts punishment on himself, which is the more terrible, 
the more confident he was before that he was good and blameless in 
the eyes of god and man. " O ye generations of mortals, how unworthy 
of the name of life I must reckon your existence:" so begins the last 
stasimon of the chorus, which in this tragedy, as in all those of So- 
phocles, performs the duty which Aristotle prescribes as its proper voca- 
tion ; it gives indication of a humane sympathy, which, although not 
based upon such deep views as to solve all the knotty points in the 
action, is guided by such a train of thought as to bring back the violent 
emotions and the shocks of passion to a certain measure of tranquil con- 
templation. The chorus of Sophocles, therefore, when in its songs it 
meddles with the action of the piece, often appears weak, vacillating, 
and even blinded to the truth : when, on the contrary, it collects its dif- 
ferent feelings into a general contemplation of the laws of our being, it 
peals forth the sublimest hymns, such as that beautiful stasimon, which, 
after Jocasta's impious speeches, recommends a fear of the gods, and a 
resrard for those ordinances which had their birth in heaven, which the 
mortal nature of man has not brought forth, and which will never be 
plunged by oblivion into the sleep of death.* 

§ 9. In the Ajax of Sophocles the extraordinary power" of the poet 
is shown in the production of a character, which, though entirely pecu- 
liar, and like nothing but itself, is nevertheless a general picture of 
humanity, applicable to every individual case. Sophocles' Ajax, like 
Homer's, is from first to last a brave and noble character, always ready 
to exert his unwearying heroism for the benefit of his people. He is a 
man who relies on himself, and can depend upon his own firmness in 
every case that occurs. But in the full consciousness of his indomi- 
table courage, he has forgotten that there is a higher power on which 
man is dependent, even for that which he considers most steadfast and 
most his own, the practical part of his character. This is the more 
deeply-rooted guilt of Ajax, which is shown at the very beginning of 
the play; but it does not appear in its full compass till afterwards, in 
the prophecies communicated to Teucer by Calchas, where Ajax's 

* King (Eclip. V. 863 : s7 ftot \wun tpipovn. 



LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 849 

arrogant words—" With the assistance of the gods even the feeble 
might conquer; that he was confident he could perform Jus part even 
without their help;" are cited as proof of his mode of thinking. 9 Now, 

by the vote of the Greeks, which has awarded the nuns of Achilles to 
Ulysses and not to him, Ajax has Buffered that sort of humiliation, 
which, to a character like his, is always most intolerable, and (he gods 
have chosen this moment for the punishment of his presumption. In 
the night after the decision, when Ajax has set out in the most un- 
governable passion to wreak his vengeance on the Atridie and Ulyi 
Athena distracts his mind so that he mistakes oxen and sheep for his 
enemies, and gives vent to his wrath against them. In this unworthy 
condition and performing these unworthy actions, Sophocles shows him 
at the very beginning of his drama as " Ajax the whip-bearer'' ( 
jj.acrriyo(j)6pog). When he returns to his senses, his whole soul is pos- 
sessed with the deepest sense of shame, and the more so as all his pride 
is shaken to its foundation. The beautiful Eccyclema scene t is intro- 
duced for the purpose of representing Ajax, ashamed and bumbled, with 
all the circumstances of his case. However deeply he feels his dis- 
grace, and however clearly he recognizes the gods as the authors of it, 
he is as far as possible from being a downcast penitent. His whole 
character is far too consistent to allow him to live on in humble 
resignation. He has convinced himself that he can no longer live with 
honour. It is true that the poet, in the oracle ascribed to Calchas, 
" that Athena is persecuting Ajax only for this day, and that he will 
be delivered if he survives it," suggests the possibility of Ajax having 
more modest views, of his recognizing the limits of his power. But 
this, though possible, is never actually the case. Ajax remains as he 
is. His death, in order to effect which he employs a sort of stratagem, 
is the only atonement which he offers to the gotls. \ Sophocles, how- 
ever, would look upon this as only one side of the complete develope- 
ment of the action. Severely as the poet punishes what was worths of 
punishment in Ajax, he acknowledges with equal justice the greatness 
of such a character as his. The opinions of antiquity, which regarded a 
man's burial as an essential part of the destiny of his life, allowed a 
continuation of the action after the death of the hero. Teuccr, the 
brother of Ajax, contends, as the champion of his honour, with the 
Atrida?, who seek to deprive him of the rites of burial; and I 

* See the speech of Calchas : — 

T« yk^ TiPiaaa. xitivtirx ffuftetrx 
ifxa% o /Lcoivn;. v. / >^ v >. If. 

f V.34G— 5D5. conip. chap. XXX II. o 10. 

{ Compare the ambiguous wonls in the deceitful -X' t»fu vyt <ri Xtvrfk, 

&c, v. 654, ff. 



350 HISTORY OF THE 

the very person whom Ajax had hated most bitterly, comes forward on 
the side of Teucer, openly and distinctly acknowledging the excellences 
of the deceased warrior* And thus Ajax, the noble hero, whom the 
Athenians too honoured as a hero of their race,f appears as a striking 
example of the divine Nemesis, and the more so as his heroism was 
altogether spotless in every other respect. 

§ 10. In the. Philoctetes, which was not represented till Olymp. 92. 3. 
b. c. 439, when the poet was eighty-five years old, Sophocles had to 
emulate not only JEschylus, but also Euripides, who had before this 
time endeavoured to impart novelty to the legend by making great 
alterations in it, and adding some very strange contrivances of his own. j 
Sophocles needed no such means to give a peculiar interest to the 
subject as treated by himself. He lays the chief stress on a skilful 
outline and consistent filling up of the characters ; it is the object of his 
drama to depict the results of these characters in the natural, and, to a 
certain extent, necessary developement of their peculiarities. In this 
piece, however, this psychological developement, starting from an hy- 
pothesis selected in the first instance and proceeding in accordance 
with it, leads to results entirely different from those contained in the 
original legend. In order to avoid this contest between his art and the 
old mythological story, Sophocles has been obliged for once to avail 
himself of a resource which he elsewhere despises, though it is fre- 
quently employed by Euripides, namely, the Deus ex machina, as it is 
called, i. e. the intervention of some deity, whose sudden appearance 
puts an end to the play of passions and projects among the persons 
whose actions are represented, and, as it were, cuts the Gordian knot 
with the sword. 

Sophocles having assumed that Ulysses has associated with himself 
the young hero Neoptolemus, in order to bring to Troy Philoctetes, or 
his weapons, we have from the beginning of the piece an interesting con- 
trast between the two heroes thus united for a common object. Ulysses 

* It is not till this incident that we have the Peripeteia, which was always a 
violent change in the direction of the piece (h us to UuvtIov tZv vgwrroftiwv 
ftsrafaXvi, Aristot. Poet. 11) ; the death of Ajax, on the other hand, lay quite in the 
direction which the drama had taken from the very heginning. 

f It is worthy of remark that he speaks only of the sword of Eurysaces, and not 
of Philaeus, from whom the family of Miltiades and Cimon derived their descent. 
Sophocles manifestly avoids the appearance of paying intentional homage to dis- 
tinguished families. 

X Euripides had feigned that the Trojans also sent an embassy to Philoctetes and 
offered him the sovereignty in return for his aid, in order (as Dio Chrysostom 
remarks, Orat. 52. p. 549) to give himself an opportunity of introducing the long 
speeches, pro and con, of which he is so fond. Ulysses, disguised as a Greek whom 
his countrymen before Troy had ill-ustd, endeavours to induce him to assist his 
countrymen, rather than the enemy. The proper solution of the difficulties in this 
piece is still very doubtful. 



LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 351 

relies altogether on the ambition of Neoptolemus, who is destined by 
fate to be the conqueror of Troy, if he can obtain the aid of the weapons 
of Philoctetes, and Neoptolemus does, in fact, sutler himself to be pre- 
vailed upon to deceive Philoctetes by representing himself as an enemy 
of the Greeks who are besieging Troy, and is just on the point of car- 
rying- him off to their camp, under the pretence of taking him home ; 
meanwhile Neoptolemus is deeply touched, in the first place, by the 
unsophisticated eloquence of Philoctetes, and then by the sight of his 
unspeakable sufferings;* but it is long before the resolute temper of 
the young hero can be drawn aside by this from the path he has once 
entered on. The first time he departs from it is after Philoctetes lias 
given him his bow to take care of, when he candidly admits the truth, 
that he is obliged to take him to Troy, and cannot conduct him to his 
home. Yet he still follows the plans of Ulysses, though much against 
his own inclination, and this drives Philoctetes into a state of despair, 
which almost transcends all his bodily sufferings, until Neoptolemus 
suddenly reappears in violent dispute with Ulysses, as himself, as the 
simple-minded, straightforward, noble young hero, who will not in any 
case deceive the confidence of Philoctetes ; and as Philoctetes cannot 
and will not overcome his hatred of the Achaeans, he throws aside all 
his ambitious hopes and wishes, and is on the point of escorting the 
sick hero to his native land, when Hercules, the Deus ex machina, 
suddenly makes his appearance, and, by announcing the decre. 
fate, produces a complete revolution in the sentiments of Philoctetes 
and Neoptolemus. This drama, then, is exceedingly simple, for the 
foundation on which it is built is the relation between three characters, 
and it consists of two acts only, separated by the slasimon before the 
scene, in which the change in Neoptolemus's views is brought about. 
But if we consider the consistent and profound developemem of the 
characters, it is by far the most artificial and elaborate of all the irorkfl 
of Sophocles. The appearance of Hercules only effects an outward 
peripeteia, or that sort of revolution which bears upon the occurrei 
in the piece; the intrinsic revolution, the real peripeteia in the drama 
of Sophocles, lies in the previous return of Neoptolemus to his genuine 
and natural disposition, and this peripeteia is, quite in accordance with 
the spirit of Sophocles, brought about by means of the characters and 
the progress of the action itself. 

§ 11. In all the pieces of which we have spoken hitherto, the pre- 
vailing ideas are ethical, but necessarily based on a religious foundation, 
since it is always by reference to the divinity that the proper bi 

* V. 9G."> : , EfAo) /u,\v otKros lino; if/.^'iTTUxi ri; roZY «»J{«f, ol *Z* t»<wt»» i/./et x«< 

ireixui. The silence of Neoptolemus in the ice&e beginning with <>.v & * ■■ 
uvloZv <n &£««, v. 974, and ending with the words uxovrofAat fut, \, 107 '. is just as 
characteristic as any speech could have heen. 



352 



HISTORY OP THE 



given to human actions in every field. There is, however, one drama 
in which the religious ideas of Sophocles are brought so prominently 
forward that the whole play may be considered as an exposition of the 
Greek belief in the gods. 

This drkma, the GEdipus at Colonus, is always connected in the old 
stories with the last days of the poet. Sophocles attained the age of 
89, or thereabouts, for he did not die till Olymp. 93. 2. b.c. 406,* and 
yet he did not himself bring out the GEdipus at Colonus ; it was first 
brought on the stage in Olymp. 94. 3. b. c. 401, by his grandson, the 
younger Sophocles. This younger Sophocles was a son of Ariston, the 
offspring of the great poet and Theoris of Sicyon. Sophocles had also 
a son Iophon by a free-woman of Athens, and he alone, according to 
the Attic law, could be considered as his legitimate son and rightful 
heir. Iophon and Sophocles both emulated their father and grand- 
father ; the former brought tragedies on the stage during his father's 
lifetime, the latter after his grandfather's death : the whole family 
seems, like that of iEschylus, to have dedicated itself to the tragic muse. 
But the heart of the old man yearned towards the offspring of his be- 
loved Theoris ; and it was said, that he was endeavouring to bestow 
upon his grandson during his own lifetime a considerable part of his 
means. Iophon, fearing lest his inheritance should be too much di- 
minished by this, was urged to the undutiful conduct of proposing to 
the members of the phratrla (who had a sort of family jurisdiction) 
that his father should no longer be permitted to have any control over 
his property, which he was no longer capable of managing. The only 
reply which Sophocles made to this charge was to read to his fellow- 
tribesmen the parodos from the GEdipus at Colonus ;f which must, 
therefore, have been just composed, if it were to furnish any proof for 
the object he had in view ; and we think it does the greatest honour to 
the Athenian judges, that, after such a proof of the poet's powers of 
mind, they paid no attention to the proposal of Iophon, even though 
he was right in a legal point of view. Iophon, it seems, became sensible 
of his error, and Sophocles afterwards forgave him. The ancients found 

* The old authorities give Olymp. 93. 3. as the year of Sophocles' death: this 
was the year of the Archon Callias, in which Aristophanes' Frogs were brought out 
at the Lenaea, and the death of Sophocles is presupposed in this comedy as well as 
that of Euripides. The Fit a Sophoc/is, however, following Istrus and Neanthes, 
places the death of Sophocles at the Chocs; and as the Choe's, which belonged to 
the Anthesteria, were celebrated in the month Anthesterion. after the Leuaea, which 
fell in the month Gamelion, the death of Sophocles must be referred to the year 
before the archonship of Callias, consequently to Olymp. 93.2. If we suppose that 
some confusion has taken place, and substitute for the Choes the lesser, or country 
Dionysia, we should still be veiy far short of the necessary time for conceiving, 
writing, and preparing for the stage such a comedy as the Frogs, even though we 
should" also suppose an intercalaiy month inserted between Poseideon and Gamelion. 

f Eu'itt'Tov, %'ivi, rZ,<roi x,^? a h v« G63 ff, Comp, chap. XXIL § 12. 



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